


Sunlight Hurts My Eyes

by MooseFeels



Series: Pictures at an Exhibition [1]
Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alien Viktor, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Anxiety, Art, Body Image, Curator Yuuri, Depression, Eating Disorders, Intern Yuri, M/M, Museums, Phichit: one true wingman, Self-Esteem Issues, Soulmates, body issues cw
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-29
Updated: 2017-09-06
Packaged: 2018-10-12 11:36:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 31
Words: 37,218
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10490037
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MooseFeels/pseuds/MooseFeels
Summary: Viktor leaves his homeworld for a job on Earth, and he meets Yuuri and--Yuuri is a curator at an art museum, and the new docent seems very interested in him.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Especial thanks to my good friend MildSweet for the idea and the development and the editing and the help.

Viktor stands in front of the house for a long moment and looks at it, before he looks down at Makkachin and says, “It’s too big for us, mm?”

Makkachin barks a couple of times. He looks back up at the house and he sighs, heavily. Apparently his predecessor had a  _ family.  _ Mother, father, brother, sister, their spouses, and they decided to leave to raise their kids back on homeworld. Back on Vara. 

It’s just Viktor, is the thing. It’s not his parents or his brothers and sisters or his  _ grandparents _ , even. It’s just Viktor and Makka. The two of them. 

It’s Viktor and Makka.  

Vara is billions of miles away. Vara is  _ lifetimes _ away for the people from Earth. 

Viktor takes a long, deep breath. Pulls the keys from his pocket and unlocks the door and walks into his house and his new life. Makka bounds ahead of him, into the house. Boxes crowd the opening room, his personal effects. The house is furnished. He walks in and shuts the door. In the kitchen is a basket stuffed with fruit and a note. 

_ Welcome to Earth!  _ It says. It lists the number for the museum and a few places to eat. Viktor smiles at it, at the consideration. He puts the note back down, on the counter. 

It’s strange. Viktor’s been alone for years. His mother and father died almost a hundred and twenty years ago. Viktor’s been alone for years, without a partner or a family, and somehow, millions of billions of miles from his  _ homeworld _ he is less lonely than he was all his time on Vara. 

Viktor feels his eyes drift closed for a moment, remembering the feeling of his mother’s hands on his shoulders. Her long fingers, her silvery hair, her playful smile. Sometimes he imagines he can hear her voice in his ears. 

She lived a long time. But death came for her, much as it came for his father. The doctors said he would take after her and not his father-- that he would live as long as his partner; that he would not die alone as so many others would-- as so many others  _ do. _

“My son,” she’d said, once, when he was small (long, long ago). “You are neither and you are both, and never doubt that your father and I love you very, very much.”

His father died at four hundred, like most from Crina do. His mother had died in the same moment, as was their way. 

Viktor opens his eyes, on Earth. 

It’s not  _ jetlag _ that he has, but it’s similiar. There’s a spinning weight behind his eyes that he can feel shaking and rattling into his joints and fingertips. A sensation almost of distance, a strange kind of exhaustion that he can’t shake. He knows it’ll wear off, eventually, but for now, under new gravity and the light of a new star, Viktor feels very strange. 

He walks through the house, to the places where labeled boxes have been placed-- the long thin boxes of his artwork and posters, the large ones full of books and clothes. He supposes his bathroom is as good a place as any to begin unpacking. His soap, his shampoo, his toothbrush and toothpaste. A bottle of lotion that he places in the cabinet, the kind his mother used. A scent of a tree on Vara that blooms in a strange season, a smell they told him he could not find on Earth. Earth with its green trees and blue sky. Viktor unpacks his towels and looks at them for a long, long time, before he strips out of his clothes and takes a shower. The shower is a narrow, glass cubicle and the water takes a long moment to rattle up through the pipes and turn warm. He sighs under the spray, feeling the weight of travel slip off of him. The weight of  _ home _ . 

This will be different.

* * *

 

“The new guide is coming today, so be sure to say hi,” Phichit comments , pulling out files to hand to Yuuri. The new exhibit planning has started, and with it piece requests from other museums and catalogue research and visual storage inventorying. The old exhibit is being taken apart and cleaned-- the space will be ready to go in the next three days. 

“Mhmm,” Yuuri replies, looking over a grant proposal again. “Thanks, Phi.” 

Phichit nods. “It was a shame to lose Celestino. Did you know he was here since the museum  _ started _ ?”

Yuuri nods, absently. Phichit’s right; it was a shame to lose his expertise, but not to free up his salary for some other positions. They’ve got a new intern from Vara coming too, with the new guide as well. 

People from Vara, they tend to come with big networks of people-- fathers and mothers and children and pets and friends and acquaintances. Celestino himself lived with his husband, his mother and father, his in laws, his brother and his brother’s wife, his nieces and nephews, and a menagerie of pets. He left to raise his children on Vara-- on  _ homeworld _ . The fact that the new guide is alone is bizarre, and the intern already has family on world, so they only had to pay moving and housing costs for two of them, instead of a dozen or more. All of the departments are getting an uptick in funding, and the museum will have more than one docent  who speaks Varan without a  _ terrible _ accent. It was a shame to lose Celestino, but this is good. 

Yuuri doesn’t talk to the docent staff often, just a training when new exhibits open and answering questions as they come up. But the staff is small, so he’ll probably see the new docent around every day. He’ll have to be friendly. 

Yuuri stifles a sigh that’s attempting to drag up from his lungs. Yuuri hates being friendly. Yuuri hates having to talk to people. 

Yuuri has trouble, with people, generally. 

“Hey,” Phichit says. 

Yuuri looks up, at him. 

“It’s going to be fine,” Phichit says, smiling. 

Phichit has a way of smiling that makes Yuuri believe him, is the thing. 

Yuuri nods a couple of times, loosely. 

“You just have to introduce yourself,” Phichit says. “That’s all. I can do the rest.”   
Yuuri nods again. Swallows. 

“Thanks, Phichit,” he answers. 

Phichit nods. “Apparently he’s kind of a weird guy,” he says. “I heard from Otabek, at least.”

Yuuri resists a laugh. “Otabek thinks everyone is strange,” he says, adjusting his glasses. Apparently the Martian colonies are  _ very _ different.

“Stop wearing your glasses at the computer,” Phichit comments. “You’ll get wrinkles. And stop worrying about the grant proposal! It looks great! And besides-- what’s the worst thing that happens?”

“They shut down the museum and I have to move back home in shame and my older sister shaves my head in my sleep and I die alone ,” Yuuri replies, not missing a beat, running his hands over his eyes, hoping to shut out a burgeoning headache. 

“ _ They say no, Yuuri _ ,” Phichit says. “They say no and we organize a different exhibit. They’re not going to shut down the museum. The museum is the  _ oldest diplomatic interplanetary art institution on Earth _ . Okay? Worst thing that happens is they say no. Best thing that happens is they say yes!”

Yuuri takes a deep breath and lets it free. “Okay,” he says. “Okay.” He presses send on the email. 

“Okay,” he says. “I did it.” 

Phichit smiles again, that warm smile. “See?” He says. “You did it! And now you’ll stop looking at that computer and you won’t get  _ wrinkles! _ ”

“Phichit, that’s an old--”   
“Don’t you  _ say _ it’s an old wive’s tale; my  _ yaai _ told me and she looked  _ thirty _ to the day she died, Yuuri,” Phichit says. “Come on, let’s get lunch. My treat.”

Yuuri nods and stands, grabbing his jacket and following Phichit out the door of the office. It’s down a short stairwell to the administrative lobby and then out the door to the marble and glass lobby of the museum proper. Guang Hong at the ticketing desk waves hello to them and Yuuri waves back as Phichit links arms with him. They tap down the stairs quickly and head down the street to the sandwich spot. 

“Do you think the new guy will be hot?” Phichit asks.

“Phichit!” Yuuri sputters around a bite of his panini. “You can’t-- I--”   
“I’m just wondering,” Phichit replies. “Celestino was apparently quite the stallion back in the day-- have you seen pictures of him when he first started here, right after contact? Total babe. They say people from Vara don’t age but I don’t know. Celestino always kind of looked like a horse to me.”

“We haven’t even met them yet,” Yuuri answers. It’s a blustery day-- early spring still holding a chill in the city air. The trees are just beginning to bud, the air is damp. “I’m not comfortable objectifying my coworkers even if they’re just hypothetical right now. Or if they’re former coworkers that are  _ married _ with  _ children _ !”

Phichit rolls his eyes. “You would do this if I got some tequila in you,” he says. 

“You are not allowed to get some tequila in me,” Yuuri replies. “It’s barely noon.”

“So what I’m hearing is I should get tequila in you  _ tonight _ and objectify our hypothetical, present, and past coworkers,” Phichit says, taking a bite of his own sandwich. 

“If you’re buying my drinks,” Yuuri says, “ _ Maybe. _ ”

Phichit grins, and they head back up the stairs and into the museum lobby. 

“Oh! Yuuri, Phichit,” Yakov, the head docent says. “Come meet Viktor and Yuri.”

Yakov is from Earth and has been at the museum for years, since his thirties. He’s a tall, severe looking man with sharp eyes. He stands near the ticketing desk with two slim figures, one tall and the other a little shorter. They both have the pale hair and eyes most people from Vara have and--

Yuuri immediately feels the blood rush to his face. 

“Hello!” The taller man says. “My name is Viktor Nikiforov-- I am the new docent for Vara tours. I am very pleased to be working here with you.” He extends his hand and Yuuri takes it. 

“Katsuki Yuuri,” he murmurs. “Curation.” Viktor stands tall over him, easily six and a half feet tall. Shorter than Celestino by far but still slender and  _long._ His hair is silvery and straight, long and draped into his face. His eyes are clear, sky blue. 

Yuuri feels overwhelmed. Celestino was tall and slim and he had long hair, too, and intense eyes but Celestino was not unsettlingly  _beautiful_ the way Viktor is. Yuuri feels overwhelmed and very nearly lost. 

“Phichit Chulanont,” Phichit says, over his shoulder, all confidence and volume before these beautiful strangers. Yuuri feels a sensation of gratefulness that Phichit is here to ground him. 

“Yuri Plisetsky,” the other person says. They stand nearly six feet tall-- they must be something like a teenager to Varans, given how comparatively small he is. 

“Yuri is of course going to be our intern,” Yakov says. 

Viktor looks from Yuuri to Yuri, and says, “Your names! They are so similar!” He laughs, the sound bright and crisp. “We should give you a nickname,” he says, to the other Yuri. “Yurio! So no one can get confused!”

“Yes!” Phichit agrees. “Even if it’s just around the office, that’s a great idea-- don’t both of you agree?”

Yuri Plisetsky has cold green eyes and shining blonde hair, silver-toned and stunning. His features crumple slightly into a deep frown. Yuuri feels a stab of panic in his own gut at the expression. 

“No,” they both say. 

Viktor looks at him, and smiles. 

His smile is  _ beautiful _ .

“Yurio,” he says, turning to look at Yuri Plisetsky, the  _ intern _ , “don’t be absurd. We couldn’t unseat Yuuri here, we’re  _ new _ .”

Yuri’s eyes narrow, and Phichit laughs, his hand a sudden and steadying weight on Yuuri’s shoulder. “It was so nice meeting you! I’m sure Yakov has to show you the rest of the staff and museum and we have grant proposals to finish up! Come on, Yuuri, let’s go!” 

And Yuuri has enough time to smile apologetically before Phichit whisks him away, up the stairs, to safety.

* * *

 

Viktor has been on Earth for three days before he has his first day at work. He gets there an hour early, to look at the exhibits that are presently up. There’s works by Andrew Wyeth, presently, being shown in conversation with landscapes of Vara. Viktor’s seen prints of both artists before, but never in person, and he finds himself lost in their expanses and shapes.

“Beautiful, no?” A voice says, in lightly accented Varan. 

Viktor turns and he smiles. “Doctor Feltsman, yes?” he asks.

The man nods, extending a hand. He has aged features and a bald head, heavy wrinkles around his eyes. Different from how his father looked aged, but similar. Familiar. 

“Just Yakov, please. A pleasure to finally meet you,” he says. “I hope your move is going well.”

Viktor shrugs. “As well as can be expected. I hope you don’t mind that I came in early-- I wanted to get a feel for the collection.”

“Of course,” he answers. “I hope it does not disappoint.”

Viktor smiles, reflexively. “Not at all! I have seen only prints of these. The color, it is different here. Colors are different on Earth.”

“Celestino-- your predecessor-- often said the same thing,” he comments. He trains his grey eyes on the soft, washed sepias and blues of  _ Christina’s World _ . “I suppose the suns are different.”

Viktor nods. “I’m still adjusting, but it’s different.” The wide canvas sweeps out side to side. He turns back to Yakov. “It sounds like I have big shoes to fill.”

Yakov chuckles. “You came highly recommended and your academic work is fantastic. I think you’ll be an excellent fit.”

Viktor smiles. He tucks a lock of his long, silver hair behind his ear, out of his eyes. 

Yakov gestures back toward the lobby. “Come meet your counterpart,” he says. “We’ll give you a full tour later.”

Viktor follows Yakov up to a set of administrative offices, where another Varan  is sitting at a table reading. He looks younger than Viktor, his hair cut shorter and tucked behind his ear, brow furrowed. 

“This is Yuri Plisetsky,” Yakov says. “Our intern for curation of Varan art.”

“Viktor Nikiforov,” he says, extending his hand. “Nice to meet you.” He says it in Varan. 

He looks at Viktor’s hand and then back at Viktor. His green eyes are clear and sharp and--

_ Oh _ , Viktor thinks.  _ This _ . He’d hoped he would have left this back on Vara.

Yuri takes his hand. He does not smile. “A pleasure,” he says. 

Yakov pulls out a folder and a pen. “Just some paperwork and we’ll get your badges and take you through the museum and introduce you to the staff. We’re very small, so you’ll be working closely with-- well, most of us. I have to make a phone call-- I’ll be back, momentarily.”

Viktor nods. “Thank you,” he says.

He starts filling out information and pulls his visa and travel information from his pocket. 

“You speak like a rustic,” Yuri says. 

“I grew up in Pieyetri,” Viktor says. “But nice try. I’ve heard this my whole life.”

Yuri looks up at him, green eyes narrowed. “Like a  _ hick _ ,” he hisses. 

“It was good enough for the Micha,” Viktor replies. “And for the University there. My father’s accent was good enough for them as well.”

Yuri turns away. 

They finish their paperwork in silence.

First day and  _ already _ Viktor is making a great impression on the only other Varan member of staff. 

He finishes the paperwork and a moment later, Yakov returns and pulls them out of the room and takes their pictures with security for their badges and then pulls them downstairs to tour more than just the administrative offices. 

"Oh! Yuuri, Phichit," Yakov calls, in English. "Come meet Viktor and Yuri."

Viktor turns to look and--

And there's two men, both shorter than him. Not too unusual-- Viktor is short for a fully grown Varan but still tall by Earth standards. They both have dark hair, and one has warm, brown skin. The other is paler, though still warm-toned, and rapidly flushing pink. His blood must be red, Viktor realizes. Red blood. Viktor's skin is toned from his purple blood, cool-toned like the purple sky. To see gold instead of silver, red instead of purple, on skin-- the sight catches something on Viktor's throat. They are both very beautiful, but something about the blushing man--

"Hello!" Viktor exclaims, his voice feeling far too loud. "My name is Viktor Nikiforov--  I am the new docent for Vara tours. I am very pleased to be working here with you.”

The flushing man takes his hand gently, and says with a soft voice, "Katsuki Yuuri. Curation." 

Katsuki Yuuri has brown eyes that are warm and golden and soft and beautiful, and Viktor feels the thundering of his heart in the right side of his chest. He hopes he isn't blushing himself. 

The other man smiles easily, warmly. "Phichit Chulanont," he says, extending his own hand. All mischief and lightness. 

“Yuri Plisetsky,” Yuri says, beside Viktor. Yuri doesn't extend his hand forward at all. 

“Yuri is of course going to be our intern,” Yakov says. 

Viktor looks from Yuuri to Yuri, and says, “Your names! They are so similar!” He laughs, and he looks at Yuri and raises his eyebrow. “We should give you a nickname,” he says. “Yurio! So no one can get confused!”

“Yes!” Phichit agrees. “Even if it’s just around the office, that’s a great idea-- don’t both of you agree?”

Viktor was thinking that maybe Yakov would catch it. He knows Yuri would. It's subtle, in a way. A gesture to him still being a  _child,_ the shape of the word in his mouth in Varan.

“No,” they both say, but in different ways. Yuuri almost  _panicked._ Terribly worried.

Viktor looks at Yuuri, and he smiles. His blush deepens, starpoints of pink-red on his round cheeks. There's something nervous and vulnerable in his eyes. 

“Yurio,” he says, turning to look at Yuri, the _child_ , “don’t be absurd. We couldn’t unseat Yuuri here, we’re  _ new _ .” 

Yuri’s eyes narrow, and Phichit laughs, voice loud in lobby. He grins, looking at Viktor. "It was so nice meeting you!" He wraps a hand protectively over Yuuri's shoulder. "I'm sure Yakov has to show you the rest of the staff and museum and _we_ have grant proposals to finish up!" He turns slightly, pulling Yuuri with him. "Come on, Yuuri, let’s go!

Yuuri smiles a little, softly. His mouth is pink. The upward curved corners and warm, friendly eyes. 

And he disappears, back into the offices. Viktor watches the space he occupied, and he smiles. 

"Wow," Viktor mumbles, almost dumbly. He finds his fingertips resting over his own smiling mouth. A moment, before he turns and focuses back on Yakov and Yuri--  _Yurio_.

"So the museum," Yakov comments, heading down a hall toward the exhibits.

 


	2. Chapter 2

A soft rain falls in the morning. Viktor wakes up to the sound of it, gently hitting the tiles of his roof. It’s four in the morning here, very early. Viktor sleeps less than people from Earth-- a remnant of his Crinyan heritage. Still, though, the sound of the morning seeps through him, into his bones, and he lays in bed for a long time to watch the day gradually dawn through his window. 

Winter solstice is long passed, and the days grow longer still-- he’s told about four minutes longer on each side. It’s still dark, for now, but he knows that soon it will be morning in full swing; bright and clear. The rain falls. The morning slowly begins, grey and soft. 

Viktor pulls himself out of bed and into the shower. He sings to himself a little as he washes his long hair and his face. He towel dries his hair and braids it into a plait between his shoulders. It’s the only way to keep it out of his face at this point, and even as strands of it come loose into his eyes throughout the day, it’s better than constantly pulling ungainly locks behind his ears (which stick out anyways). 

He looks at himself in the mirror and he takes a deep breath, letting it slip out of himself slowly, easily.

He’s worked at the museum for nearly a month now, and it’s good. He loves it. He loves talking about the paintings to groups visiting from Vara and the new exhibits, loves guiding them through the works and talking through the specifics of light and lighting from the different stars of Vara and Earth. He loves how his shoes sound on the marble floor and how his voice carries in a gallery. He’s even coming to love the particular accent Yurio has when he assists, the way he holds himself like he’s taller than he is. He and Viktor make quite a pair, guiding around groups that stand heads taller than them through the museum. 

He loves working at the museum.

Makkachin trods up to him, into the bathroom, and she  _ borks! _ Her voice is gentle, a tugging reminder to let her out into the yard before breakfast. 

Viktor smiles and slides into his shirt and slacks before opening the back door for her. 

It’s a gently raining day so far. Trees and bushes in his backyard are beginning to bloom-- he doesn’t know their names yet, but there are purple flowers on shrubs beside the house that remind him of the skies of home. There’s a flowering tree, too, a different shade of purple. The flowers on it are small and round, perfectly shaped in their way. 

He has breakfast (yogurt and porridge) and he calls Makkachin in. She eats her breakfast while he watches the news, and then he lets her back out before setting her up with toys and heading into the museum for the day. 

It’s a short train ride-- fifteen minutes-- to the museum from his house. He steps in and shows his badge to the person at the desk and he heads up the stairs to check his mail and email in the office. And then he heads down to lead tours.

It’s a routine, with a rhythm and a shape, and inside that routine is a moment, every day, that makes his heart stand still. 

Katsuki Yuuri wears his name oddly-- his family name first and his personal name second. Viktor has since learned that this is a cultural gesture, from Yuuri’s country. Yuuri is from a nation called Japan, which is over a large ocean from where they are now. He speaks English differently because it’s not his native language-- it might be the Earth standard tongue for interplanetary work but Earth doesn’t really have an on-world standard language. Viktor has gathered that the peculiarities of Yuuri’s pronunciation or phraseology are from the accent, but the softness, the deliberate way he has of stringing a sentence together, this he has gathered is all Yuuri. 

Katsuki Yuuri comes into the office every morning at eight thirty, and he leaves a cup of tea on Phichit’s desk. Phichit thanks him, and Yuuri catches Viktor’s eye contact, briefly, and Yuuri smiles and says, “Good morning, Viktor.”

And VIktor smiles back and answers, “Good morning, Katsuki Yuuri.”

Every morning. It happens usually between Viktor checking his email and reading over exhibition notes. 

It’s Viktor’s favorite part of the day. 

This morning, Viktor reads over his exhibition notes and is backchecking them on notes from previous exhibitions when something changes.

Yuuri comes in a leaves a cup on Phichit’s desk, and then he comes up to his and places a cup down, too.

Viktor looks up at him. 

Yuuri wears glasses. Viktor had never seen them in person until he came to Earth, and he finds the blue frames of them and square shape charming on Yuuri’s round face. Yuuri’s brown eyes look at Viktor from behind his glasses, and he says, “It’s hibiscus tea. Celestino always said it made him think of home.”

Viktor looks at the cup and he looks at Yuuri and he smiles. “Thank you,” he says. 

Yuuri smiles back. “You’re welcome,” he answers. “I’m sorry-- I’m sorry it took me so long.”

Viktor shakes his head. “No-- no,” he says. “I didn’t expect.” He feels himself smile, a little more broadly. “Everyone has been so...inviting. I feel very welcome.”

Pink starspots show up on Yuuri’s cheeks, just barely. Viktor loves how Yuuri blushes.

“I’m-- I’m glad,” Yuuri says. “I didn’t...I hope I didn’t-- I don’t-- I hope I don’t seem unfriendly. I get--” He gestures, with his hands, holding them parallel to his head, palms facing each other. He shakes his wrists, so that his hands move parallel to perpendicular with his eyes. Movement, inward to outward. “ _ Focused _ ,” he says, firmly. His eyebrows knit together. 

“You’ve made me feel very welcome,” Viktor says. “Don’t worry.”

Yuuri smiles again. “I’m glad. I hope you like it. The tea.”

Viktor nods. Yuuri steps over to his own desk.

Viktor takes the cup gently and holds it, warm, in his hands.

* * *

 

Viktor leaves the office at around nine thirty, to meet up with Yakov and talk through what he’s doing for the day. He does this every day, and Yuuri watches him every day do this. But today he holds a cup of tea as he strides out of the office. 

Yuuri can’t prevent himself from watching him walk away. Yuuri, generally, has a lot of trouble preventing himself from watching Viktor. 

“Alright,” Phichit says. “I guess I owe you five bucks.”

Yuuri feels himself blush, but he grins, victorious, anyway. “I told you I’d do it,” he says. “And I told you the coffeehouse had hibiscus tea.”

Phichit grins like the devil himself. “I’m  _ very _ proud,” he says.

Yuuri stands and bows, once in each direction of the office. Phichit laughs, warmly, at Yuuri’s theatrics before he sits back down. 

Phichit spins in his chair, lazy, slow circle. “I’m very proud,” he repeats. “ _ But _ ,” he says, and this he drags out, a playful, lazy syllable being stretched. “But you still have to come out with me tonight. When was the last time you were out?”

“You’d know,” Yuuri answers. 

“Yuuri that was  _ months _ ago,” Phichit groans. He spins in his office chair. “I thought you had a date a couple weeks ago or something.”

Yuuri shrugs. “I went but-- they didn’t-- they didn’t show,” he says. “I didn’t feel like-- I didn’t-- it didn’t count, so I didn’t-- I didn’t want to count it.”

Yuuri looks away from Phichit to his computer. He pushes his glasses up, into his hair so he can read over a catalogue from Yale about a collection of works they had on loan from England. Yuuri looks away from Phichit so he doesn’t have to see how Phichit’s eyes change, how the quirk of his mouth settles differently. Yuuri stopped telling Phichit about being left by dates or dates not showing because Yuuri got tired of Phichit having nothing to say. Yuuri stopped arranging dates because he got tired of being stood up. 

It was two months ago. It was four months ago that he went out with Phichit. 

“You should come out with me tonight,” Phichit says. “Use that five dollars I owe you to buy something at a bar and come dancing! Or we could go to karaoke! Or to a movie!” Phichit turns, in his chair, again. “It’s Friday! Come out with me!”

“Maybe next week,” he says. He takes a sip of his coffee. “I have to do laundry and clean my bathroom.”

Phichit sighs, just barely. “Okay,” he says. “You should. Chris is beginning to think I made you up.”

“How is it going between you?” Yuuri asks.

Phichit grins. “It’s good. It’s  _ really _ good,” he answers. “I went over to meet his  _ folks _ a few weeks ago.”

“Wow,” Yuuri answers. “I thought you guys weren’t exclusive?”   
Phichit nods. Spins in his office chair again. “We’re not. But it was still nice. His mom made a dish from her homeplanet that was pretty good. Chris apparently brings people over all the time but it was still nice to be included, you know?”

Yuuri nods. “Maybe we could go to karaoke with him? Next week?” He asks. He looks at Phichit and smiles a little. 

Phichit smiles back. “Yeah!” He exclaims. “Yeah, definitely! I’ll talk to him and let you know, okay?”

Yuuri nods, and smiles, and he gets back to work. 

Next week. 


	3. Chapter 3

Viktor usually gets home from the office at around seven. The museum closes at five, but there’s rush hour commute and usually-- sometimes, he likes to just take the time he would spend trapped on the train and instead commune with the works. Really look at them, himself. Makkachin has an automatic feeder and a dog door, for exactly this reason. 

There’s something to the washed, cool browns and golds of the Wyeths, something to it that pulls at something in Viktor’s chest. Something leading and strange. 

Viktor never saw Crina, but his father would sing songs from it, in his low and somber voice. Viktor never learned the songs-- he never learned the language. He’s not sure he would know how to find them, or how he would feel about them sung in a voice that didn’t belong to his father. 

“He’s overrated,” Yurio says behind him. His voice is bitter and sharp. “Most overrated artist of the twentieth century.”

Viktor feels himself smirk, reflexively. “I don’t know, Yurio,” he says. “He’s no Picasso.”

Beside him, Yurio bristles, visibly. 

“Shut up, you idiot hick,” he spits. “You wouldn’t know genius in Earth painting if it was in front of you. I would know because I’m here right now and it’s  _ not _ .”

“Yurio, do you know the word  _ Pentecost _ ?” he asks.

“That’s not my name,” he replies. “And no, I  _ don’t _ .”

“A holy day here, for some people,” Viktor says. “A god rose from the dead. It shares the name with this painting. Don’t you think that’s interesting? The raising of a god and the raising of the nets.”

He looks at the painting, next to Viktor. Wrinkles his nose. 

“It’s overrated,” he says. 

“It’s full of light,” Viktor retorts.

Yurio’s eyes flicker, a bare moment. A softening. If Viktor didn’t know to look for it, he wouldn’t see it. 

But as suddenly as the moment is there, there’s a commotion of laughter coming from the lobby, echoing off the high ceilings and walls. 

Viktor cocks his head, and he walks over the lobby, where Phichit and Yuuri and someone else are laughing. 

Viktor stands in the doorway, breathless, to watch them. The other person is tall, but not tall the way Viktor is, the way his mother was. He’s tall, with broad shoulders and well defined, strong muscles, and even from a distance, Viktor can see his black-in-green eyes. Eyes like his father’s eyes-- not exactly like his father’s; his were blue. Sunglasses are pushed back from his face, into his hair. From Crina. 

Yuuri’s face goes open, soft, and free when he laughs. It’s enchanting.

“Oh!” Phichit exclaims, his eyes alighting on Viktor. He must be fifty feet away. “Viktor! You should come with us! Have you ever been to karaoke?”

Viktor must be fifty feet away, standing a doorway, alone. It’s immediately familiar to him and woefully unfamiliar. The distance, he knows. The invitation is new. 

Viktor feels his eyes slide from Phichit’s grin to Yuuri. Yuuri’s smile is shy, nervous. His hands shake where they push his hair out of his eyes and behind his ear. His brown eyes fix on the floor. Phichit’s smile is easy and warm, like it always is. The stranger looks easy and confident and inviting; he slides an arm over Phichit’s shoulder and Phichit ducks gracefully into the space underneath.

Viktor leans against the doorway. 

“I’m not familiar,” he murmurs. 

“Oh, Viktor!” Phichit exclaims. He spreads his arms wide, smiling widely. “You’ll love it.  _ Time-honored _ , centuries old, Earth tradition. Perfected in our Yuuri’s homeland-- and he’s  _ excellent _ .”

“Phichit,” Yuuri says, and he rolls his eyes. The stranger chuckles.

“We’re going with Chris-- he’s never been either,” Phichit continues. “You should come! I’m buying drinks!”

Viktor smiles. “I wouldn’t...I would hate to--” He looks for the word. “You don’t have to.”

Yuuri looks up at him. He smiles, just barely. “Please?” He asks. 

And Viktor, he can’t say no. 

“Should I-- do I need to change?” He asks, gesturing to his clothes. Just a button down and slacks, nothing special. 

Phichit shakes his head. “You’re perfect the way you are,” he says. “Come on.”

Viktor pulls some more of his hair behind his ear and he walks up to them. The stranger extends his hand forward. “Chrs,” he says. His voice has a slight accent, but not a Crinyan one. 

“Viktor,” he replies, taking his hand and shaking it. 

Chris slides his glasses down. “Phichit, dearest, are we going to stand in a museum lobby all night or are you going to take me to a bar?”

* * *

 

Yuuri isn’t sure what possessed him to say  _ please _ , but he’s filled with a nervous, fizzing happiness that Viktor didn’t say  _ no.  _

He joins the group easily-- Phichit leads with Chris’s arm slung casually over his shoulder. Yuuri hangs back with Viktor, following them. 

“Karaoke,” Viktor says, his tongue following the syllables carefully. “Phichit said you knew what this is?” he asks, turning to Yuuri.

“It’s not  _ just _ a Japanese thing,” Yuuri says, feeling embarrassed as hell. “It’s just really popular there, I guess.”

“Yes,” Viktor says. “But what is this?”

“It’s like a game,” Yuuri says. “You sing a song, along with the words on the screen, and everyone teases you.”

“Yuuri!” Phichit gasps, turning back slightly in fake shock. “I would  _ never _ tease you!”

“The place we’re going to-- Phichit says they have songs from Crina and Vara, not just Earth songs,” Yuuri says. 

“That’s  _ right _ ,” Phichit says. “So you and Chris  _ have _ to participate.”

“Phichit, I grew up in Switzerland,” Chris says.

“I’m sure they have something in German,” Phichit comments, lightly. 

Viktor smiles, just slightly. Some of his long hair falls into his eyes, in that way it does. “I have a terrible singing voice,” Viktor says. “You would shudder to hear me.”

“That’s half the fun!” Phichit exclaims. 

“Phichit sings like a drowning cat,” Yuuri says, and Viktor laughs while Phichit sputters to defend himself. 

They wander past a train station and take a turn down a different street. Gradually, the lights and buildings shift a little. The sun is beginning to go down and the golden streetlights flicker on. 

“I haven’t seen this part of the city yet,” Viktor comments beside him. His eyes are wide and inquiring. 

“It can be...a lot,” Yuuri comments. “Being right downtown can be really nice but also...overwhelming.” 

“It reminds me of Pieyetri,” he comments. “Ah, the-- the city, I grew up in. All the people and the-- the buildings get tall.” He watches a neon sign for a moment, head cocked. “Did you grow up in a city?”

Yuuri shakes his head. “No. A little town,” he answers. “Haesetsu.”

Viktor smiles. “Is it bright and tall? Like here?”

Yuuri laughs. “No, it’s low and dark. Right beside the sea,” he says.

Viktor smiles. “Pieyetri, too, was beside the sea,” he says. “When I was a,” he pauses, looking for the word. He gestures, his hand going from up high to down low. “A time ago, my mother and I would go and see the fishermen.”

Yuuri nods. “Old men would stand along the bridge, beside the beach, for hours with their poles,” he says. “Father still does it.”

“We’re here!” Phichit exclaims. “Come on, you’ll love it.”


	4. Chapter 4

Yuuri isn’t sure what possessed him to say  _ please _ , but he’s filled with a nervous, fizzing happiness that Viktor didn’t say  _ no.  _

He joins the group easily-- Phichit leads with Chris’s arm slung casually over his shoulder. Yuuri hangs back with Viktor, following them. 

“Karaoke,” Viktor says, his tongue following the syllables carefully. “Phichit said you knew what this is?” he asks, turning to Yuuri.

“It’s not  _ just _ a Japanese thing,” Yuuri says, feeling embarrassed as hell. “It’s just really popular there, I guess.”

“Yes,” Viktor says. “But what is this?”

“It’s like a game,” Yuuri says. “You sing a song, along with the words on the screen, and everyone teases you.”

“Yuuri!” Phichit gasps, turning back slightly in fake shock. “I would  _ never _ tease you!”

“The place we’re going to-- Phichit says they have songs from Crina and Vara, not just Earth songs,” Yuuri says. 

“That’s  _ right _ ,” Phichit says. “So you and Chris  _ have _ to participate.”

“Phichit, I grew up in Switzerland,” Chris says.

“I’m sure they have something in German,” Phichit comments, lightly. 

Viktor smiles, just slightly. Some of his long hair falls into his eyes, in that way it does. “I have a terrible singing voice,” Viktor says. “You would shudder to hear me.”

“That’s half the fun!” Phichit exclaims. 

“Phichit sings like a drowning cat,” Yuuri says, and Viktor laughs while Phichit sputters to defend himself. 

They wander past a train station and take a turn down a different street. Gradually, the lights and buildings shift a little. The sun is beginning to go down and the golden streetlights flicker on. 

“I haven’t seen this part of the city yet,” Viktor comments beside him. His eyes are wide and inquiring. 

“It can be...a lot,” Yuuri comments. “Being right downtown can be really nice but also...overwhelming.” 

“It reminds me of Pieyetri,” he comments. “Ah, the-- the city, I grew up in. All the people and the-- the buildings get tall.” He watches a neon sign for a moment, head cocked. “Did you grow up in a city?”

Yuuri shakes his head. “No. A little town,” he answers. “Haesetsu.”

Viktor smiles. “Is it bright and tall? Like here?”

Yuuri laughs. “No, it’s low and dark. Right beside the sea,” he says.

Viktor smiles. “Pieyetri, too, was beside the sea,” he says. “When I was a,” he pauses, looking for the word. He gestures, his hand going from up high to down low. “A time ago, my mother and I would go and see the fishermen.”

Yuuri nods. “Old men would stand along the bridge, beside the beach, for hours with their poles,” he says. “Father still does it.”

“We’re here!” Phichit exclaims. “Come on, you’ll love it.”

* * *

 

The bar is dark and strange-- Phichit has an animated conversation with someone and then they’re brought back to a small room with some couches and a machine and some kind of projector. Yuuri And Phichit and Chris file in, and Phichit immediately pulls out a menu of some kind and continues his animated conversation with someone else. Viktor tries to take everything in, tries to grasp it. 

Something is slid into Yuuri’s hand, and Chris stands beside him and asks him something-- it’s in Crinyan and Viktor can’t catch it though.

It’s immediately familiar and disorienting to hear it, here, of all places.

Viktor tries Varan. “I’m sorry,” he says. “My father spoke it but not me.”

Chris’s eyebrows raise, barely, and he says in Varan of his own, “I’m told my accent is terrible, anyway.”

“Mine too,” Viktor answers. 

Chris laughs. Throws his arm around Viktor’s side and says, in English, “Don’t give him anything with cinnamon, Phichit! Remember it’ll poison him!”   
“Got it!” Phichit answers, and he saunters over to slip a small glass into Viktor’s hand. “Lychee,” he says. “Celestino always liked it. Don’t sip it, just shoot it back.”

He brings a few other glasses into a corner and hands them to Yuuri and Yuuri turns bright pink before beginning to nurse them. 

Viktor feels his eyes too big, too watchful, watching Yuuri sip on drinks and turn pinker and pinker.

Viktor chokes back everything in the small glass Phichit gave him. It’s very sweet and it settles a warm blooded sort of feeling into him, heavy on all his limbs. He coughs-- it burns a little-- and he feels his blood rise to his cheeks and throat. 

Chris smiles. “Lightweight?” He asks.

Viktor nods. Alcohol is still an earth import on Vara. He’s only had it a couple of times before. He likes this, though. This is good.

“Okay,  _ I’m _ going to turn on some music,” Phichit says. “And  _ actually _ do karaoke while the rest of you get drunk enough to be fun like me.”

* * *

Yuuri loves champagne.

Yuuri also loves how warm the karaoke booth is. He’s getting a little sweaty, so he unbuttons his shirt. He feels kind of heavy and sleepy, but in a way he likes. He doesn’t feel stupid or slow or too big, like he usually does. Just sort of heavy, sort of sleepy, sort of comfortable. 

Chris is singing something, but in a language Yuuri doesn’t speak. Phichit is laughing, so it must be fun. It must be funny. Chris has a nice voice, surprisingly deep. It shakes something in the interior of Yuuri’s ribs; he likes it. It’s good. 

Yuuri loves champagne and he loves karaoke and he loves tequila.

Viktor is smiling, but he’s sitting over on the other side of the couch, by himself.

Yuuri stands up and his legs wobble, just a little, while he walks over to where Viktor is. He slides down into the couch, next to him, but he can’t keep his balance and he bumps into Viktor’s side.

“Your eyes,” Yuuri says.

Viktor’s silver eyebrows twitch. Yuuri reaches out places his thumb between them, to rubs away the wrinkle there. The worried look. 

Viktor cocks his head to the side. 

“Don’t look,” Yuuri says. “ _ Worried _ . Don’t be worried.” He hiccups. 

Viktor smiles. “I’m-- sorry,” he says. “I don’t speak that language.”

Yuuri covers his mouth, hides the laughter that springs out of him. “Don’t be  _ worried _ ,” Yuuri repeats, and he tries to hold onto it in English. Viktor smiles back, though, so Yuuri thinks it worked. 

Viktor’s fingers are long and thin. Yuuri watches his hands where they tuck his long hair behind his ear, both of his blue eyes coming to view. 

Yuuri smiles. “We can see you,” he says. 

The smile on Viktor’s face goes a little broader, a little brighter. “It gets in the way,” he says. 

“It’s pretty,” Yuuri says. “But I like your face more.”

Viktor’s eyes sparkle. 

“Yuuri!” Phichit calls, and Yuuri turns. 

“Phichit!” Yuuri replies, and Phichit laughs, and Yuuri  _ loves  _ when Phichit laughs. Yuuri loves Phichit. He’s his best friend. 

“Yuuri, you should come sing,” he says. “We want to hear your pretty voice!”

Yuuri stumbles up; goes to grab the microphone. He smiles. “Phichit, turn on a song for me.”


	5. Chapter 5

Yuuri’s voice is beautiful. 

It’s rough and unfinished; it crackles around notes and sounds. Viktor loves to hear him. Yuuri closes his eyes tight when he scrapes for notes, for sounds. Viktor watches him sing, listens to him sing, and he cheers and applauds when he’s done, like Phichit and Chris do. 

Yuuri bows, messily, and he laughs when he comes back up. He sways and bobs through space, easily and quickly. He settles back down on the couch, beside Viktor and he leans against him. Viktor loves how warm and flushed he is. He loves how his skin feels pressed against him; like the pinkness in him is almost wearing off. The feeling is  _ lovely _ . 

“How did I sound?” Yuuri asks, his voice rushed and soft. His smile is crooked, warm and bright. His glasses are crooked and his hair is sweaty, sticking to his skin. 

_ Wow _ , Viktor thinks. 

“It was lovely,” Viktor answers, honestly. “Although I feel guilty for not knowing the song.” 

“Yuuri has bad taste anyway,” Phichit says after kissing Chris wetly on the mouth. “His version is better than Britney’s anyway.”

Yuuri squirms, coming to rest his head on Viktor’s shoulder. He sighs, heavily. “Phichit is too nice to me,” he murmurs, conspiratorially. 

“I disagree,” Viktor replies. 

“ _ You _ ’re too nice to me,” Yuuri answers, his brown eyes sparkling a little. He threads his arm around Viktor’s, pulling even closer to his side. Viktor doesn’t mind at all. Viktor, rather, emphatically enjoys this.

Yuuri says something, but Viktor can’t understand him-- it’s not in English or Varan.

Chris laughs though, and replies in the same language, and Yuuri smiles. 

“He wants to braid your hair,” Chris says, to Viktor. “He says he’s pretty good at it.”

Yuuri looks up at him, bright, soft eyes. “Please?” he asks. 

Viktor nods, loosely, dumbly. He turns, so that Yuuri can see and feel all his hair, and Yuuri’s hands are incredibly gentle where they brush through his hair, begin to divide and section it. 

The feeling is unbearably close and warm.

“ _ Yuuri _ ,” Phichit sighs, from across the room. His voice is petulant and bright. “Yuuri stop being  _ boring _ .”

Yuuri sighs. “No,” he says. “ _ You _ said I had to come out. You didn’t say I wasn’t allowed to braid Viktor’s hair.”

Chris chuckles at that. 

Viktor feels a sort of embarrassment. Not that Yuuri is braiding his hair-- this is lovely, like so many things about Yuuri are lovely. It's a sensation that he is spoiling a moment by doing something so intimate around other people. He averts his eyes from Phichit and Chris, the floor suddenly very interesting. 

Yuuri's hands are steady and gentle, and the braid is tight and sure. 

Phichit pouts for a moment, before exclaiming,  “We should go dancing!”

Yuuri stops braiding and gasps. “ _ We should go dancing!” _ he exclaims. “We should all go dancing! I  _ love _ dancing!”

“I know a club!” Phichit says. “Right around the block! Come on! We should go!”

Yuuri stands, a little unsteadily. Viktor finds that he’s also a little wobbly, a little loose, on his feet. It’s different, but it’s also quite nice. Yuuri leans into him, and Viktor lets him, his body radiant and warm beside him. 

They stumble out of the karaoke joint and into the night, laughing loudly, following Phichit.

* * *

 

Yuuri loves the club. He loves that he can feel the music resonating in his sternum, right underneath his collarbones. He loves the low light, except in the places where it’s bluebright and different. He loves the press of bodies and people against him, but he especially loves how close he is to Viktor, who is so tall and beautiful and nice.

Viktor’s so nice. He’s so nice to be around. Yuuri loves being next to him. He loves seeing him in the office. He loves his rich, sweet voice and the way he watches with his blue eyes. Viktor’s so nice. Yuuri’s so glad he’s dancing with him. 

Yuuri’s so glad he’s dancing. He should go out every weekend with Phichit. This was a great idea.

Yuuri grabs onto Viktor’s shirt, pulls him closer, grinds against him. Viktor looks almost surprised. His hair is beginning to fall back into his face-- his pretty face with fine, sharp features. 

They keep dancing.

This was a great idea.

* * *

 

When Yuuri wakes up the next morning, it’s to the dry, acrid taste of vomit in his mouth and a headache like a freight train, rattling him from his bearings and comfort.

“Phichit,” he murmurs, driving the balls of his hands into his eyes, hoping the pressure will help. 

Last night was a terrible idea. He can’t really  _ remember _ it, but if the hangover is anything to go by, last night was a terrible idea.

He groans, lowly, before pulling his curtains closed and stumbling uncomfortably out of bed and to the bathroom.


	6. Chapter 6

Viktor shuffles into his house far later at night than he has before. It’s well after midnight; and the city is dark and quiet. The trains stopped running. He hadn’t realized there reached a time of night when they would stop, but he’s found it. It’s  _ now _ . 

Makkachin sleeps in her bed by Viktor’s door. He looks at her with soft eyes before slipping into his room. He pulls off his clothes and he lets his hands hesitate at his hair. 

It’s still woven into a braid, from earlier in the night. The end secured with a small tie. 

His hand hesitates.

He closes his eyes again.

Yuuri’s body beside him in the club. The sound of his laughter in his ears. His hands carefully braiding his hair. 

_ You’re too nice to me _ .

Viktor keeps the braid in.

Yuuri said he wanted to  _ see _ him. Viktor couldn’t imagine. There’s something so  _ novel _ to it. Viktor spent most of his childhood doing everything he could to make sure people  _ couldn’t _ see him. Too short by far and dreadfully scrawny. His only refuge home.

His only refuge home and dreaming, dreaming, dreaming of being  _ away _ . Watching hours of broadcasts received from Earth, their broadcasts coming slowly from long ago. 

Yuuri doesn’t want to chase him or tease him or pull his hair and punch his nose. Yuuri wants to see him. 

He pulls his blankets over his body and he lies awake for a long time, drifting slowly, slowly, to sleep. 

He wakes up later than usual, with Makkachin licking at his face. He chuckles, and he eases up from the bed, groaning. He has a blurry, distracting sort of headache behind his eyes, and his stomach feels queasy. He stumbles to the kitchen and pours some food in a bowl for her. Pours himself a glass of cool water and sips at it, sitting along the bar. 

His phone buzzes against the marble countertop. He frowns at it, picking it up. 

It’s a message from a new number, a picture. Yuuri, shirt unbuttoned and necktie around his head. His glasses have disappeared and his eyes are shut with the blinding force of his bright, sweet smile. He’s leaning against Viktor, and Viktor sees something in his expression that he’s never seen before. A softness that looks unfamiliar on his oversharp features. 

He squints, observing his own face closely. 

A message--  _ it’s chris.  _

Another--  _ from last night.  _

A third--  _ with phichit and yuuri.  _

Viktor smiles.  _ I did not realize I gave you my number _ , he types out.  _ I had a great time. _

There’s a pause, before he gets a message that says,  _ you and yuuri seemed to get along well _ .

_ Thanks for the picture _ , Viktor replies.

He saves it. 

He gets a message from another number a few moments later.  _ DON’T FORGET TO DRINK WATER!!!  _ It reads. 

_ THIS IS PHICHIT!!!! _ The next one reads.

Viktor chuckles a little, and he takes another sip of water. 

In his sleep, some of his hair escaped the braid. He pushes an errant lock behind his ear, out of his face. 

He looks at his phone.

He wonders if he gave Yuuri his number.

He finishes drinking the water. He doesn’t get anymore messages the rest of the day.

He guesses he didn't give Yuuri his number after all.

* * *

 

Yuuri decides to pretend that the karaoke night never happened. Phichit seems to have gotten the memo, and Viktor, too. 

He’s so grateful. He knows with the kind of certainty he only has after making bad decisions that he made an ass of himself. But he goes to the office on Monday, and nothing seems particularly amiss. He drops off Phichit’s coffee at his desk, and he lingers, briefly, before turning to Viktor’s and leaving a tall cup of hibiscus tea. 

Yuuri looks at him for a moment, before realizing. “Your hair,” he says. “You braided it.”

Viktor looks at him and smiles. His clear blue eyes are the color of the sky; sparkling and bright.  “Someone told me that people should see my face more,” he answers.

Yuuri barely restrains a blush from coloring his cheeks. It’s true, is the thing. Without his curtain of long silver hair, Yuuri can see him more clearly, and Yuuri is always glad to see Viktor more clearly. 

Yuuri looks away, overwhelmed. “It looks-- pretty,” he says. 

“Thank you,” Viktor answers.

Yuuri wanders to his desk


	7. Chapter 7

“When was the last time you went?” Phichit asks, across the office. 

Yuuri shrugs. “Maybe a few months ago? I don’t have membership at a rink in the area and I’ve lost the callouses on my feet.”

Phichit laughs. “ _ Sure _ ,” he says. “I know you still run. Are you still--”   
“I swim three times a week and I do weight training,” Yuuri says. “The doctor says exercise is good for my anxiety.”

Viktor’s not listening, not  _ really _ . He’s in the office today instead of leading tours, reading over signage for tours in Varan. It’s mostly alright, even if the grammar they’re using is antiquated. It’s strange to be working at the desk instead of in the exhibits, but it means he’s getting to listen to Yuuri and Phichit talk to each other. It means he’s getting to hear Yuuri, which is lovely, because in the weeks following the night on the town, they’ve gone back to mostly just saying “good morning” to each other. No messages, no serious conversations, no playful conversations, no jokes. 

Viktor has been  _ starving _ for more. 

Phichit huffs, a short sighs. There’s a pause. Viktor keeps his eyes trained on the text, resisting the urge to look at them, to actively follow whatever they’re talking about. 

“I’d go with you,” Phichit says. “You could come to my rink.”

“I don’t know,” Yuuri says. It’s a tone Viktor’s come to recognize that means Yuuri  _ does _ know but he doesn’t want to talk about it. 

Viktor’s not paying attention. 

“Please, Yuuri?” Phichit asks. “I  _ miss  _ skating. I know you must, too.”

Yuuri  _ sighs _ .

There’s a rhythm between Yuuri and Phichit, Viktor has discovered. Phichit pulls, tries to tug Yuuri to a plan or a direction, and eventually, usually, Yuuri follows. To lunch or to dinner or to  _ skating _ .

Viktor wonders. Ice skating? 

“Maybe,” Yuuri says. “But not tonight. I need to do laundry.”   
“Of course,” Phichit answers. 

They keep talking, but Viktor finds himself engrossed deeply in rewriting a sentence that has completely lost meaning in its oblique, antique grammatical structure. 

Viktor stops thinking about it until he’s riding the train home, looking at the picture Chris sent him, again. 

He hesitates for a moment, before typing out a message,  _ Does Yuuri ice skate? _

After a moment, he gets the response,  _ used to. he was professional or something, i think? phi told me a while back. why. _

_ They were talking about it at the office,  _ Viktor answers.  _ I was curious. _

_ phi used to skate,  _ Chris answers.  _ i think that’s how they met.  _

Viktor pauses. He gets off the train and walks to his house. Greets Makkachin and hooks her leash to her collar. She’s bigger than equivalent Earth creatures-- taller and longer and heavier. Her fur is more dense, and in the light of Earth’s atmosphere, she’s brown. Her fur caught the light of the sun on Vara and shone with undertones of deep chartreuse and gold. 

Viktor pauses, and the next time he checks his phone, there’s a link to a video.

He feeds Makkachin. Makes his own dinner. 

Looks at his phone.

Sits down on the couch and opens the video.

And it’s Yuuri. Katsuki Yuuri, skating at a professional competition-- it looks much smaller than the venues for Olympic footage he saw as a child back on Vara, but it’s in  _ color _ . There’s so much detail-- he can see the texture of the shining sequins on Yuuri’s costume and the crease and sweat on his brow. 

Yuuri slides across the ice a few times, and the camera overhead zooms in close to him. 

And Viktor pulls his phone closer and the video plays.

The last broadcast Viktor saw was 1964-- Innsbruck, Winter Olympics. 

This is so different. 

Yuuri  _ flies _ . Yuuri stumbles and misses jumps, but the ones he makes, Viktor has never seen anything like them before. He does the most graceful, meticulous things with his feet. He has such a  _ gravitas _ \--

Viktor watches the video again.

Viktor finds another video-- a performance of Yuuri’s at another competition. The commentators speak a language he’s never heard before. Viktor watches it anyway. 

Viktor watches Yuuri stumble. He watches him soar. He watches Yuuri’s body do something so graceful, so beautiful, so strange. His motions are familiar but also so  _ strange  _ to him. So  _ beautiful _ .

Viktor watches the video again.

His dinner grows cold on the table before him. 

The night drags on, and Viktor finds himself settling into his bed with Yuuri’s videoes playing. Yuuri’s beautiful, lyrical movement. Yuuri, who is this tantalizing stranger that Viktor sort of knows. Who braided his hair and told him he was too nice to him. 

Viktor watches Yuuri skate.

And after long hours, deep in the night, Viktor realizes the question--

Why did Yuuri  _ stop _ ?


	8. Chapter 8

Phichit lives in a studio apartment on the other side of town. It’s closer to his rink.

He wakes up every morning and jogs three miles. Wednesday evenings he does yoga, to retain his flexibility. 

Phichit works thirty hours a week and the museum, and on tuesday and sunday afternoons, he teaches four hours of beginners skating lessons.

Phichit had to leave skating three years ago--  _ professional _ skating. Even with the bronze under his belt at the Grand Prix, he couldn’t get the sponsorship to keep up, and Thailand wouldn’t send him for skating to the Olympics. But there’s no love lost, between him and the ice; things are actually friendlier there with the pressure off. 

Phichit commutes about forty five minutes to work each day, but he’s a ten minute walk from the rink, and that’s what matters.

Phichit rolls over at five am and there’s a message, on his phone.

_ Yuuri skates _ ? It reads.

Phichit looks at it for a long time, getting his eyes to focus. 

He looks at it for a long moment before he gets another message--  _ This is Viktor.  _

Phichit sits up and turns on the lamp in his room. 

He dials the number.

There’s an answer on the first ring. 

“He skates?” Viktor asks. His voice is high and soft and sweet, like it always is. 

Chris’s voice is deep, like his father’s, a rich baritone. Phichit loves to listen to him, to the precise way his words sit in his mouth, each syllable used exactly. His voice sits, tonally, right between a Swiss accent and a Crinyan one. 

Yuuri’s voice is always tentative, but also so earnest and  _ dear _ . He never sounds sure about anything, but his voice is nearly a singular comfort to him, something he knows well. 

Yurio’s voice is sharp and splitting and angry. And Viktor’s voice is sweet and delicate. 

“He used to,” Phichit answers, yawning. “Why?”

There’s a pause, and Viktor says, “I saw some of his videos, online. He-- does he-- he skates  _ very _ beautifully.”

Phichit nods a couple of times, before he realizes. “Yeah, he was incredible. He retired a few years ago though.”

“ _ Why _ ?” Viktor asks, his voice soft but emotive.

Phichit scratches his head. “It’s-- it’s a long story. I--” He yawns. “If I don’t start jogging now, I’ll never get my run in. Can we talk later?”

“Oh!” Viktor exclaims. “Yes! Lunch? Today?”

Phichit nods. “Sure,” he says. “See you then. Today. At the office.”

He hangs up and puts on his clothes and he goes for his jog.

Phichit loves his morning jog. He hates putting on his clothes and his shoes and he hates getting out the door and he hates getting his pace. He hates coming home and taking off his jogging clothes and showering. But he loves the run, itself. He loves how it clears out his brain, pulls the sleep of it and lets the thoughts come through clear and bright. 

Phichit hits his stride easily, and he’s a few blocks away from his building when the thought hits him-- 

Viktor saw some of Yuuri’s programs online. 

_ How _ did Viktor know that Yuuri would have programs online? 

How did Viktor know Yuuri would have  _ programs? _

Yuuri is  _ gone _ on Viktor. And Yuuri is too anxious to actually watch how Viktor waits for him in the morning, to see him, to see how Viktor came to the bar for him, to  _ see _ Viktor. 

Phichit smiles. 

_ Interesting _ . 

He finishes his jog and gets back to the apartment, he takes a shower and gets dressed for the morning. He grabs a yogurt from the fridge and rides the train into work.

Phichit gets in before Yuuri, and Yuuri gets in with coffee and tea. 

And today, Viktor is late to the office.

Usually he’s there when Yuuri comes in, but today he blusters in fifteen minutes after Yuuri puts a cup of tea on his desk. His hair is a mess-- half hanging in his face and half in a braid. His clothes are rumpled and he has dark, purple circles under his eyes. 

He says something in a smooth rush of Varan before turning around and saying, “I am so sorry-- I slept poorly last night and this morning Makkachin would not eat her breakfast and--” He drags a hand over his face and he rolls his eyes. “I am sorry.”

Yuuri smiles at him, just barely. “Is Makkachin--”

“A pet,” Viktor says. “Like a dog, but..different. A  _ shchenok _ , are you familiar?”

Yuuri shakes his head. 

Phichit takes a sip of his coffee. Turns in his desk chair and rolls his eyes. Of  _ course _ they’re both dog people.

“When Yurio leads more tours, I will bring her! She is very friendly,” he says, laughing. “But now-- ah, I am missing a tour.” And he waves goodbye and dashes back down the stairs. 

Yuuri types. 

“He has a  _ dog _ ,” Phichit says. 

“Shut up, oh my god,” Yuuri retorts. 

Phichit can’t wait for lunch.

* * *

 

Viktor meets Phichit at a tiny place a few blocks from the museum. It’s poorly lit and the menus are laminated. Phichit orders for both of them, and they sit down at a tiny, rickety table across from each other. 

“Yuuri never comes here,” Phichit says. “And I  _ know _ he packed his lunch from home today.”

Viktor swallows, nervously. He didn’t get any sleep last night, watching Yuuri’s videoes, and he feels like an idiot, coming in late and a mess.

Phichit  _ smiles _ in a way that makes him feel horrendously nervous. 

“He skates?” He asks. 

Phichit shrugs. “He used to, professionally. But you  _ know _ that, I heard.”

Viktor swallows. There’s something spicy in the air and it’s making his eyes water. “Chris sent me his programs,” he answers. “He told me you skate too?”

Phichit nods. “We worked with the same coach for a long time,” he replies. “I went further than he did, but he was always better than I was.”

Music in a language Viktor doesn’t know plays overhead. “I saw them,” he says. “The programs.” He takes a deep breath, remembering. It’s so vivid. “I never say something so beautiful. Why did he stop?”

Phichit takes a deep breath, and sighs. “Did you see his Grand Prix?”

Viktor shakes his head. 

Phichit nods. “He only made it all the way the once, and-- It happened after a really, really difficult semester and then his dog died and he just couldn’t-- he was supposed to carry the Japanese Olympic team, but after the performance at the final, the JSF didn’t want to send him. And Yuuri just-- he stopped. He stopped, okay? He graduated and he dashed through grad school and he got the museum job and he stopped.”

Viktor frowns. “But he was...his work was so  _ beautiful _ ,” he says. “I watched, for years, every Olympic games that Vara received-- the broadcasts, from space, over time? I watched all of them, and none of them  _ ever _ looked as...as musical as he did.  He was  _ beautiful _ , Phichit.” Viktor feels something tight and strange in his chest, something that strangles his voice in his throat. 

“You watched the Olympics?” Phichit asks, his eyes going a little wide with surprise. 

“Yes,” Viktor answers. “Yuuri was supposed to go to them?”

Phichit makes an uncertain gesture. “Yeah, but the federation wouldn’t back him and sent Minami instead. It was-- it was  _ really  _ rough. So he retired, and he doesn’t skate anymore.”

“But it’s the-- he’s an artist,” Viktor says. 

“Yeah,” Phichit says. “And he stopped.”

Two bowls arrive at the table. 

Phichit grabs a fork and Viktor does too. 

“If you hurt him,” Phichit says, around a bite of noodles, “I will follow you offworld to kill you. And so would Chris.”

Viktor balks. “The last thing I want to do is hurt Yuuri,” he says.

“Great,” Phichit replies. 

“But you still skate, yes?” Viktor asks. The food is spicy and strange, unfamiliar in a way he has trouble explaining. He doesn’t mind it, though. 

“Yeah,” Phichit says. “Thailand didn’t want to send me and I had kind of run up my professional stuff with the Grand Prix. I took home a bronze before I left, which was cool.”

“You should send me your programs,” Viktor says. “Skating is my favorite and there’s so much-- the sport is so different, from what I’ve seen.”

Phichit smiles. “What was the last games you saw?”

“Innsbruck,” Viktor answers.

Phichit snorts. “Yeah,” he says. “There’s a lot to show you.” He takes a bite, and says with his mouth full, “Eat fast; I think you have a tour in fifteen minutes.”


	9. Chapter 9

Viktor keeps watching Yuuri’s videoes and he keeps going to work and he keeps thinking about Yuuri. 

Yuuri keeps bringing him tea and saying good morning to him. 

Viktor wishes he would say more. Viktor wishes he knew how to get lunch with him or see him after work. He wishes he knew how to ask him about skating--  _ You stopped, why did you stop _ ? Viktor wishes he knew how to ask Yuuri to move into his big, empty house with him. 

Viktor wishes these things, but he can’t imagine how he would begin to tell them to Yuuri. 

Yuuri doesn’t say anything about the night at karaoke. Viktor doesn’t ask him. Their interactions remain sparse and simple, nothing more.

It is probably Viktor’s least favorite feeling.

Time passes, though, and eventually a date is scheduled in the mid-summer for Yurio’s first tours solo. Yurio will lead and Viktor will stay up in the office and work. Time has slipped onward, and the seasons have shifted from cool and wet spring to a vibrant, searing summer. The light is brighter than any other Viktor has experienced; he uses a parasol for shade while coming in and covers himself in protective lotion before he leaves the house. Yurio was not quite so cautious and is still a rather unfortunate shade of lavender from being burned. 

But the timing is right, so he leashes Makkachin and brings her into the office, his folio tucked under one arm and his parasol in the other hand. She gets a few odd looks-- not many of her kind on Earth-- but she’s very well behaved on the train and into the museum.

She sits beside his desk happily, gnawing idly on a toy he got her.

Yuuri walks into the office about half an hour later, cheeks flushed from the warm weather, a drink carrier in one hand and his own bag in the other. 

He’s depositing a cup on Viktor’s desk--  _ iced _ tea, he’s discovered-- when he spots Makkachin and his eyes grow big and soft.

He puts the whole drink carrier on Viktor’s desk and leans down to offer his hand for her to sniff. She does a few times, before standing up lick his face.

Yuuri laughs. “You must be Makkachin,” he says, his voice not changing to a babying tone but staying warm and bright. His hands curl into her curly fur, the color a toneless, unshining black against Yuuri’s skin. “I’ve never seen a Varan Abyss-Hound before. You’re very beautiful. Viktor must take such good care of you.”

“I try,” Viktor says, smiling. 

Yuuri scratches her behind her long, drooping ears and stands. She rears up on her hind legs to stay near, to lick Yuuri with her deep violet tongue. 

“We don’t see a lot like her on earth,” Yuuri says. “I knew you had a pet but I wasn’t familiar with the name you used for her.”

“ _ Schenok _ ,” Viktor says. “Makka,  _ syad’te _ .”

She eases back down, her middle legs tucked politely before her rear legs, behind the front ones. She wags her tail. Her dark black eyes, still trained on Yuuri, seem to glitter happily. 

Makka likes Yuuri. Yuuri likes Makka.

This is good.

Yuuri smiles again, before noticing the drink carrier and flushing again. “I’m so sorry,” he says, quickly, his voice soft sweet. 

“She only hears Varan,” Viktor says. “I’ve tried teaching her English but she is so  _ stubborn _ .”

“She’s a good girl,” Yuuri says. 

Viktor nods. “She’s a very good girl,” he answers. “She’s enjoying earth, I think.”

“Good,” Yuuri says. “You should bring her more often. I could keep an eye on her for you while you give tours. Or if you need someone to watch her when you go on conferences. Or I could walk her in the summer for you; I know that you have to be careful in the sun.”

“Ah, poor Yurio,” he chuckles, and Yuuri laughs a little too. “I will remember this!” he exclaims, and  _ immediately _ he starts thinking of excuses to bring Makka to Yuuri’s house, to bring toys and leashes for him to leave there, to come back and get later. 

She barks, softly, and Yuuri nods. 

“Good morning,” he says, taking the drink carrier again. 

“Good morning,” Viktor answers. 

Yuuri heads his own desk at the other side of the small office. Hands Phichit his coffee. 

Viktor, distracted and delighted, doesn’t get nearly as much done as he’d like. 


	10. Chapter 10

The first summer rainstorm of the year catches Yuuri off guard, yet one more detail in a morning full of small, disastrous errors. First he set his alarm for the wrong time, waking up a full twenty minutes late. Then he slips in the shower and pulls  _ something _ in his leg. Then he forgot to switch out his laundry last night so his clothes are all either wrinkled or wet. Then he has to go back to grab his briefcase from his apartment, and midway through the train to work, the storm starts. He misses breakfast and his phone is stuttering on a twenty percent charge before noon. 

He’s late and drenched when he gets to the office, thunder echoing the sound of his heartbeat trapped inside his hollow chest. He’s missing the coffee and tea he usually grabs to boot. 

It’s a rough morning, and it only gets worse when Yakov drifts by his desk and says, “The grant committee is coming this afternoon. Are you ready?”

Yuuri stifles a groan. 

He was up all night making sure he was ready. Going over his talking points, his proposal for the next exhibit, his schematic for collaboration with their equivalent institution on Vara. Yuuri was up all night making sure he was ready and all he has to show for it is a soaked suit and a burgeoning headache between his eyes.

“Yes,” he says, after a moment, squinting his eyes hard shut and sighing, quickly. “Yes.”

Yakov looks at him, assessing. 

“I’m-- I’m--” Yuuri’s voice gets caught in his throat for a moment. “I’m fine,” he says. 

Yakov assesses him for a moment, before he nods and moves on. 

Yuuri watches him go, and then he manages to extricate himself from his desk and stumble to the bathroom and lock himself in a stall before it happens. 

It’s like drowning. 

Yuuri can feel breath slipping out of his grasp. The room loses sounds and slips into a ringing, fuzzy silence. He feels something stuck, caught, in his throat, somethings strangling and uncomfortable. He can’t get his eyes to catch and hold on anything; there’s just a stuttering feeling. 

Cold panic rears up and seizes him, pulls him into the deep water, and holds him there.

It hasn’t hit him this bad in years. 

Yuuri does everything he can to pull himself from it, but it’s dizzying and noxious. 

His hands shake as he pulls his phone out of his pocket and he carefully sends Phichit a message--  _ In the bathroom. Soichi _ .

_ That bad _ ? Phichit texts back, almost immediately.  _ What can I do? _

_ Time _ , Yuuri sends back.  _ Working on it _ .

_ K, _ Phichit sends back.  _ <3. _

Yuuri’s hands shake too badly to get his phone back in his pocket, and it clatters when it falls on the bathroom floor. He grits his teeth hard enough that his gums ache. It takes everything he has not to vomit. 

It all hurts and he breathes as best he can. 

_ It’s just sleep dep,  _ Yuuri thinks.  _ It’s just sleep dep. It’s fine. It’s fine. Let it happen. It passes. It passes. _

It stops. It passes. He knows it stops. He knows it passes. 

He knows.

* * *

 

Phichit frowns heavily and looks at his phone, and then he gets up and crosses to the other side of the office, pulls out a few brochures and posters.

“Hey,” Phichit calls. Viktor stops pretending to not be paying attention. “Help me stall.”

“What?” Viktor asks. 

“Yuuri-- the grant committee is coming and Yuuri needs more time. Help me stall, come on. The brochures will buy some time but if you can-- if you can  _ really _ introduce yourself, it’ll help.”

Viktor nods. Yuuri came in late and flustered and disappeared to the bathroom almost as soon as he came in. Something’s wrong.

“Like, if you could pretty suddenly lose your grasp of English, that would be just...really helpful,” Phichit murmurs, looking at his phone again, frowning. 

“Of course,” Viktor says, pulling out his own files of brochures and information-- some of them repeats but in Varan and a thick file of information about curating exhibits in multiple languages. He comes up to Phichit and begins to arrange information, make it look like they’re genuinely mid-conversation, and they are when Yakov enters with a handful of people.

“Ah,” Yakov says. “You all remember Celestino-- this is his replacement, Viktor Nikiforov.”

Viktor smiles, broadly and warmly. He extends his hand outward and fumbles the names of each of the members of the grant committee and laughs overloud at some of their jokes and asks for pained, exacting explanations of other ones. He interrupts mid-conversation to ask Yakov an unimportant but lengthy question, and midway through he turns to Phichit and asks a different question about the most accurate translation of a term. He jabbers and flits, and talks, all the while Yakov growing more and more red faced and irritated. 

The grant committee members, though, they hardly seem to notice that nearly fifteen minutes have gone by when Viktor hears Yuuri’s warm, soft voice. 

“I’m terribly sorry I’m late,” Yuuri says. “I’m Yuuri Katsuki; I’m very excited to discuss my plans for the next exhibit with you all.”

His clothes look drier. His hair is pushed out of his face and although his eyes look a little red around the edges, he looks mostly composed and calm, in a strange sort of way. Detatched. 

“Ah, Katsuki,” Yakov says. “Let us go to the conference room.”

Yuuri steps aside, and Yakov leads the group back through the office.

_ Thank you _ , Yuuri mouths to both of them. 

Phichit grins widely and shoots him finger guns. 

Yuuri heads back to the meeting.

Viktor watches him go. 

Phichit sighs, heavily. “Yuuri,” he murmurs, shaking his head. “Fuck.”

“He’s not okay,” Viktor says. 

“Yeah,” Phichit says. 


	11. Chapter 11

Viktor stays late in the office. He finishes up his paperwork and the galleries close and the lights dim and he stays and he waits. 

A few times, he thinks that maybe this is a mistake. 

After a long time, Yuuri slips back into the office to grab his bag. 

“How did it go?” Viktor asks, and Yuuri startles slightly and spots him. 

His hair is mussed and his eyes are red and swollen, slightly. The rest of his face looks dewy and pale and his shoulders look heavy. He looks like he is falling under the weight of his own body. Yuuri looks tired in a way Viktor has never seen before, not since he came to earth. 

It’s an exhaustion Viktor is familiar with. 

Yuuri shrugs slightly. “We should hear back soon. Finished the presentation and then Yakov took them to dinner and I had an important panic attack to get back to.”

Yuuri grabs his briefcase and winds up slumping into his office chair instead of standing. Buries his head in his hands, pressing the heels of hands into his eye sockets. 

“I need to get a cab,” he says. 

The air is quiet in the room for a tortured minute. Viktor agonizes on whether or not to break it, whether or not this could be his  _ place _ . 

But he also remembers those torturous months after his parents died, stripped down to the raw nerve inside of himself, wishing more than anything that someone else would take care of him. 

“Do you live far?” he asks.

“Other side of the city,” Yuuri replies. 

Viktor bites his bottom lip, momentarily. Thinking. 

“I live fifteen minutes away by train,” he says. “Thirty minute walk. If that is better. I could make you dinner. You could ride the cab from there. I would pay for it.”

Yuuri shakes his head. “I couldn’t,” he says. “I couldn’t-- couldn’t put you out like that.”

“You wouldn’t,” he says. “Makkachin needs extra attention and I want so badly to cook something but I cannot juggle both her and the kitchen. Please.”

Yuuri pulls his hands away. He pulls his glasses out of his shirt pocket and settles them back onto his face. “I can’t-- I can’t inconvenience you,” he says, sounding terribly unsure.

Viktor smiles. “Not at all,” he says. “I would not have offered if I had not wanted to.”

* * *

Viktor is always half a pace ahead of Yuuri; his long legs carrying him further with less effort. He walks slowly, but he doesn’t seem to mind. Most of the streets between Viktor’s house and the museum are emptied and lit by lamppost, the summer sun having set maybe half an hour ago. 

Yuuri didn’t realize how  _ late _ it was, locked in the bathroom, trying to get himself to calm down. 

“Do you walk this every day?” Yuuri asks.

Viktor shakes his head. “I usually take the train,” he says. “But this is nice. I had not realized all the flowers that would be awake.”

Yuuri smiles. “Irises,” he says. “They’re called irises.”

Viktor turns back, and smiles at him. “Irises,” he repeats. “We do not have such things on Vara.”

“No flowers?” Yuuri asks.

Viktor shakes his head. “We have flowers, but not like these. These are so big and so bright and so many  _ colors _ . The white and red and the yellow, in the middle-- so pretty. The big red ones-- Yuuri, do you know what are those?”

“Poppies,” Yuuri says. He thinks about arranging an exhibit of O’keeffes, if Viktor likes flowers so much.

“Poppies,” Viktor repeats. “So much color! So much life, on Earth. On Vara, everything is slow and wintered.”

“Your sun is different,” Yuuri says. 

Viktor nods. “Older,” he says. “And bigger. The light is different and so everything is different. Everything on Earth is so  _ young _ and so  _ quick _ .”

Yuuri looks at Viktor, realizing slowly. “How old are you?” He asks. 

Viktor thinks for a moment. “Time is different than here. And the travel takes a long time, too. I did the math, though, when I arrived and with time measurements here, I think I am five hundred and forty seven.”

Yuuri looks at Viktor, and he laughs. “You’re older than Edo,” he says. 

Viktor blushes, his cheeks turning light purple. “I am still  _ quite _ young by standards on Vara,” he says. “And our physiology is different and--”

Yuuri laughs again, unable to help it. 

Viktor looks away, as if affronted, but he has a crooked, warm smile across his face, so Yuuri figures that he can’t mind too much. 

The walk is shorter than Viktor said-- no traffic on the surface streets so they jaywalk easily. 

It’s a nice neighborhood. All of the houses are victorian revivals, painted in beautiful jewel tones and standing tall and pleased with themselves. Crepe myrtles and rhododendrons and slender ash trees frame the sidewalks. 

Viktor leads Yuuri to a tall, bright house with a cast-iron fence. Viktor opens it for him and guides him up the stairs and unlocks the door. He switches on the light and Makkachin pads quickly to the door, her nails clicking on the wooden floors. She rears back onto her very back legs to greet Viktor, before realizing Yuuri is there and rushing him, her tail wagging quickly. 

“Please,” Viktor says. “Come in.”

Yuuri stumbles in through the door and toes off his shoes beside the door and hangs his coat and his bag and scratches behind Makkachin’s ears and looks around and--

Viktor’s house is enormous. 

Not  _ big _ , precisely, but built to a totally different scale. Yuuri knows that the house belonged to Celestino before Viktor, and although Celestino was  _ tall _ , it had never quite meshed with Yuuri  _ how _ tall and what that would mean in his house. 

The doorways all rise well above Yuuri’s head; the ceilings too. The counters are higher up and the furniture as well. It’s almost like being in a funhouse built to make him feel like a small child. 

“Please,” Viktor says. “Be comfortable. Can I interest you in anything to drink? I have tea and Celestino left me with a bottle of something alcoholic if you prefer.”

“I’m fine,” Yuuri answers. The house still seems a little at odds with itself-- half stocked bookcases with boxes on the floor. Framed paintings leaning against the walls instead of being hung yet.  The furniture seems randomly placed, more like an afterthought than anything. 

“I am sorry; I am still moving,” he says, his voice clear from the kitchen. “And I keep buying prints. By the time I finally get them all hung, I am sure I will have to move offworld again.”

Yuuri pulls the cover from a print-- a Rothko. He pulls the Rothko aside and behind it is a wavering Matisse. Beside the Matisse, Charley Harper cardinals. Yuuri smiles, glances out of the living room, toward the kitchen. 

Viktor has pulled his long, silver hair out of his face and into a large bun atop his head. He’s looking through a cabinet, looking for something. 

Yuuri drifts toward the kitchen, and he notices a poster on the wall. 

Los Angeles Olympics-- 1984. 

“Did Phichit give this to you?” Yuuri asks. “He found the same print at a secondhand store a few weeks ago.”   
Viktor nods. “Yes!” He says. “I am an  _ ardent _ follower of the Olympics-- much more for winter than summer, but the piece is just so lovely and I knew it would look  _ precisely _ correct here. I still haven’t seen the 1984. The last Olympics I saw was Innsbruck, but then I left to come for Earth and it can be difficult to track down complete broadcasts of earlier games like that online, so I’ve been having trouble catching up.”

Viktor turns and hands him a glass of ice water. 

His long, thin fingers brush against Yuuri’s just barely. 

“Are there Varan sporting events?” Yuuri asks. He drifts to a chair near the kitchen, along a bartop counter. 

Viktor shrugs. He pulls out a few potatoes and starts peeling them. “There are but I never was interested. Sports are so...social? And I didn’t-- I grew up...hm, alone?”

Yuuri studies Viktor’s kitchen, keeps himself from looking at Viktor’s hands, at Viktor’s furrowed eyebrows and Viktor’s high cheekbones and amethyst-toned freckles, his blue eyes. Viktor’s long fingers with clean, square nails, moving competently and easily over a potato, skinning it. 

“My mother, she was from Vara. My father was not,” he says. “The other children, they did not like this. I watched the Olympics instead.”

“Where was your father from?” Yuuri asks.

“Crina,” Viktor replies. “You know of it, yes?” He asks. Viktor gestures, his hand holding the knife stirring the air in a small, frenetic circle. “Our moon, settled long ago. Crina and Vara, they are very similar but...different. Chris, Phichit’s friend? His family is of there.”

“Right,” Yuuri says. “There’s a political federation between them.”

Viktor nods. “Only intergalactically. They have their own planetary governments still, of course. And union between people from the two, this is still very much...hm, frowned upon?”

Viktor tosses potato peels into a small compost bucket and begin to cut the potatoes into cubes. He grabs a leek from the fridge and begins to slice it, depositing the chopped bits into a large bowl of water.

“I grew up on Vara, but I am of both,” he continues. “My mother was a brilliant dancer, one of the best of her generation. She went, to Crina, for a diplomatic recital. My father was a scholar of art-- of Earth art, if you would believe it, and he was there and he saw her and--”

Viktor pauses, his hands stilling. He takes a long breath, as if assessing the situation. As if thinking. 

Yuuri realizes, sitting in Viktor’s too-big house and with Viktor’s too long fingers and too-long hair, his strange accent and careful, deliberate way of speaking, that there is something alien to Viktor in the most wholly literal way. There is experience to Viktor that Yuuri could not hope to understand, whether because of the difference of time between them or the difference of space. 

Viktor is farther from home than Yuuri can really begin to imagine, so far away that it has taken decades upon decades for the Innsbruck Olympics to reach him. 

Viktor, who is from a different world and whose parents were from two different worlds. 

“Where I am from, we believe in...we call it  _ naparnik _ . This is hard to explain, but it is like...like half of you lives with another, and when you meet that person, you finish each other. The other part of the diptych, but it’s  _ you _ . And we all have one, and some people live over and over to find their  _ naparnik _ and other people do not and--” Viktor pauses, as if trying to find the idea again, the words again. “I am not sure I would believe in such a thing, had I not known my parents. My mother died the same day as my father. She aged as he did and she held his hand and she looked at him, each day, like he made the sun rise.” He puts a heavy bottomed pot on the stove. “And he painted her nails and braided her hair and spoke of her like she hung the clouds.”

Viktor shrugs. “But of course, it is still unusual, on Vara, for people of Crina and people of Vara to love each other, in such a way. And I stood out-- I still do, on Vara-- and…” 

He shrugs, again. “I suppose I learned I would rather be lonely on Earth than on Vara,” he says. 

He looks up from the cutting board and smiles, roguishly, almost embarrassed looking. “But yes, I like the Olympics. I have since I was small.”

Yuuri look at Viktor, and he realizes he has seen no pictures of family or friends on his desk at work or on his walls, and that while Celestino returned to Vara with a nearly full house of husband and children and parents and in-laws, Viktor lives in this too big, too tall house alone. 

Viktor likes the Olympics and flowers and Wyeth and Rothko and Matisse.

Yuuri scratches his fingers through Makkachin’s soft fur.

Viktor cooks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> surprise fucks it's a soulmate au.


	12. Chapter 12

Viktor likes leek soup. Food on earth is  _ different _ from food on Vara-- seasoned so differently and made with such different things. Meat, as a whole class of things, is still very strange to him, as is  _ cheese _ .  But he likes leeks and he likes cream and he very much likes potatoes. 

Yuuri seems to like leek soup, too. Yuuri eats his bowl quickly and Viktor calls a cab for him and Yuuri takes a covered container home with him, and Viktor, dazed, watches, the space that Yuuri occupied in his house. 

Viktor forgets, sometimes, that he is so much taller than Yuuri, but in his house, he was reminded, so clearly. 

Yuuri took home a container and went home, and Viktor feels a strange ache over his heart to watch him go. That Yuuri’s home is not  _ here _ , with him. 

Viktor liked cooking for him, though, and he liked watching Yuuri eat. Makkachin seemed to like the near  _ constant _ attention, spoiled thing that she is. Now that Yuuri is gone and no longer petting her and praising her, she is curled up on a cushion in the living room. Viktor watches out of his front door, into the darkening city light, and he closes it and walks back to the kitchen to begin cleaning up.

He’s washing a bowl when he gets a message. 

_ Are you lonely? _ It reads.

He looks at it for a long time.

_ It’s Yuuri _ , a second message says, after a moment.

_ Phichit gave me your number _ \-- a third.

Viktor dries off his hands and picks up his phone and thinks about how to respond. 

_ Less so here,  _ he decides, and on a whim, adds,   _ :).  _

There isn’t an answer, but Viktor saves Yuuri’s number, and he reads over the messages deep into the night.

Yuuri arrives on time to the office the next morning, and he leaves a cup of tea and Viktor’s container on his desk. There’s something else in it though. 

“Tofu,” Yuuri says. “It’s rude to give a container back empty and-- I just made a batch and I thought you might like some. Thank you, for dinner.”

The  _ tofu _ is a solid, white cube floating in water. Viktor looks at it, before looking back up at Yuuri. “I am unfamiliar with this,” he says, smiling a little. “How would I prepare it?”

Yuuri turns a little pink. “Oh,” he says. “Um, I like it with a little ginger and green onion and a little ponzu. It’s good with  _ katsuoboshi _ , but I know that you don’t eat meat. Cold. This batch is best cold. I didn’t press it as long so it’s soft.”

Viktor looks at the tofu again. It’s surface is a little irregular, marked slightly with crevices and openings. He puts the lid back on. “Thank you,” he says. “Should I chill it?”

Yuuri nods. “I can put it back there for you,” he says. “I just wanted to make sure-- make sure you knew.”

Viktor smiles again. “Thank you,” he says. “I’m very excited.”

He doesn’t know what ponzu is, but he can look it up.

Yuuri takes the container carefully and says, “Thank you for dinner.”

“Of course,” Viktor replies. “If you keep returning my containers full like this, I might have to send them home with you more often.”

Yuuri doesn’t quite laugh, but there’s a soft huffing of his voice and he looks down, the tops of his cheeks turning light pink. He murmurs something, Viktor can’t quite hear, and he takes the container and walks away. 

Viktor smiles. Brushes his long hair out of his eyes and gathers his notes and information for the day. They have a traveling exhibit right now, one Celestino organized, and he’s still becoming familiar with it before starting tours. It’s a series of books, written in the fourteenth century-- normally they stay in their home, overseas, but the museum is hosting them in the hope that they’ll get interplanetary exposure.

Viktor, of course, cannot stop looking at them. 

Viktor heads downstairs, before the museum opens, and puts his hands behind his back and stands, staring, at the open book before him. 

The colors are so rich and true and beautiful, is the thing. The light has been adjusted in this space of the museum, to prevent damage to the old and fragile pigments suspended on the pages-- pages made of  _ skin _ . 

Viktor’s fingers clutch at the folders behind his back, resisting hard the urge to try and reach, through the glass, to touch the pages. 

“Do you want to practice?” Yakov asks, suddenly, behind him.

Viktor turns around and looks at him. “Pardon?” he asks.

“Your tour,” Yakov replies. “Would you like to provide Yuri and I with a demonstration?”

Yurio stands beside him, sulking.

Yurio, of course, still does not seem to care for Viktor but he does seem interested in Viktor’s techniques-- his skill. He listens well to what Viktor has to say of his work-- his efforts. He may not like Viktor but he  _ hears _ him, and Viktor has enormous respect for Yurio for that. 

Viktor smiles. “Of course,” he answers.


	13. Chapter 13

“How’s the city?” Mari asks him, her voice nicotine rough and warm, like it always is.

Yuuri sighs, leaning back in the small chair in front of his home desk. He’s reading over new style requirements for exhibit wall text. It’s nightmarish.

“It’s fine,” he answers, because it is. “It’s about to get hot again. I should get a window unit.”

Mari makes a low noise of disapproval. “You’re an idiot,” she says. “I told you a place without air conditioning was stupid.”

“The other places were twice as expensive,” he groans. “You know it’s not in my budget.”

“It doesn’t have to be,” she says. 

“ _ Nee-chan,”  _ he replies. They’ve had this conversation before.

“It would be good for you,” she replies. “You’d certainly get work and it could give you...closure.”

“I don’t want to skate anymore,” he says. “And I don’t want to teach either. You and Phichit, both-- I--”   
“Okay,” Mari interrupts. “Okay. I hear you.”

Yuuri gets up, paces through the small space of his living room. “How are Mom and Dad?” He asks. 

“They’re good,” she says. “They miss you, though. Mom misses having someone to cook with. When are you going to come visit?”

“Probably December,” he answers. “Museum gives everyone a week off for Christmas. Don’t tell them though. It would be...expensive.”

“Are you paying your bills?” Mari asks.

“Not a lot leftover,” he says. “I would just have to save up. It’s not as hard for me as it is for you but it would take time.”   
Mari  _ hrrms _ into the phone. “Okay,” she says. “We miss you.  _ Tsutsuji _ you planted are doing well.”

“Thanks, Mari,” he says. 

“Later, Yuuri,” she answers.

He hangs up. Tosses his phone onto his couch and throws himself down beside it. 

He sighs, through his whole body, before slipping off his glasses and slinking back to his bedroom for bed.

He wakes up at five in the morning, and he jogs to the gym, warming up before hitting the water. 

Yuuri loves swimming. He loves the slap and drag of the water against his arms, resisting the carve of his shoulders. He loves the tight, strung feeling from the top of his thighs to his ankles. He loves the cramp he gets in the curve of his foot around lap eight, the one that disappears midway through lap nine. He loves coming up for air, gasping for it, shrieking for it. He loves diving back down. He loves how his body cuts through the water on his turn. He loves the  _ silence _ between his ears when he swims. 

Yuuri loves swimming; not quite as much as he loved skating, but he can’t do that anymore.

Yuuri climbs out of the pool after doing two miles and he takes a shower to wash the chlorine off his skin and out of his hair. He climbs back into his clothes and takes the short way home, the walk a good cool-down.

He showers for  _ real _ at home and then he dresses for work and takes the train in. Grabs coffee and tea at the shop near the museum and heads into the office. 

Viktor hasn’t been around in the mornings as often. The manuscript tour has really been holding his focus-- not that Yuuri can blame him-- but Yuuri hates looking from his desk to Viktor’s to see the tall cup of hibiscus tea go slowly cold. 

This morning is no different. Yuuri gets into the office and Viktor is already downstairs, despite the fact that the tours won’t start for another hour or two. Yuuri looks at Viktor’s empty desk, the navy cardigan draped over the chair, the papers covered in messy, Varan cursive piled on top. Yuuri looks at Viktor’s desk for a long moment, before turning around, just to throw the tea away himself.

“Tours haven’t started yet,” Phichit says from his desk. “You could go down there and give it to him. Yourself.”

Yuuri shakes his head. “I-- I couldn’t,” he says. “I have a bunch of work and I shouldn’t distract him and--”

“I bet you five bucks he’ll be thrilled to see you,” Phichit says. 

Yuuri looks at the tea in his hand. 

“Ten,” Phichit continues.

* * *

Viktor can’t stop looking at them. 

There’s a quality to the blues on it that overwhelms him. Something about the way the gold darts in in sharp, clear lines. The marking of days and and stars at the top. The way the figures hold themselves in space. 

Someone clear their throat behind him and Viktor turns and Yuuri’s there, holding a big cup of tea, like always.

Viktor smiles at him. “Yuuri,” he says. “I thank you. I apologize for missing our meetings.”

Yuuri smiles back, looking a little abashed. His round cheeks flush red. “It’s no good cold,” he says. 

The tea is warm in his hands. He looks from the cup back to Yuuri. “The new exhibit is so lovely,” he says. “I cannot keep away from it, I fear.”   
“They’re almost as old as you are,” Yuuri says, laughing a little. “Did you know that?”

Viktor tears his eyes from Yuuri to look back at the open book, on display. “I didn’t,” he says. “Or...I hadn’t really thought about it. My goodness.”

Yuuri follows him to walk back, closer, to the display. “I’m amazed Celestino got them here,” Yuuri says. “This one has never left France, before.”

“I know,” Viktor says. “I know it was printed before, but...there’s something about seeing it for real, I suppose.”

“Aura,” Yuuri says. “It has an aura.”

Viktor feels his own face stretch into a smile. “Mechanical reproduction, eh?” he asks.

Yurri smiles, too. “Yes,” he says. “Is there something similar, on Vara?”

Viktor shrugs. “Yes and no?” He says. “It is different. Time is different.  _ Life _ is different.” He considers, trying to figure out how to phrase it. “My mother’s mother, how time works on earth, I suppose you would say she is one thousand and seventy, or so. She will live longer though-- as long as she likes. Her beloved in Varan as well so they will, together live on. Dying? Dying is different. Things that have been around so long...there is little reason to think that they cannot be around longer. Singularity….this is similar, but age is...different, and so aura is too, different. Things on Earth, they can become precious through pure merit of survival.”

“So this is only good because it lasted?” Yuuri asks.

Viktor turns to look at him. Shakes his head. “Not at all,” Viktor says. “I am humbled to think, maybe, that I could exist in time with something so beautiful and so precious. And so many other people-- people of Earth-- have existed, too. So many more of your whole lifetimes fit inside the lifetime of this book. Of this record of time.”

Viktor looks at the curved cove of the upper register of the page. It shows a wedding. 

He looks back at Yuuri. 

“It is beautiful and it survives,” he says. “Two things.”

Yuuri looks at him for a strange moment. Bites his bottom lip. Like he wants to say something, but can’t.

“I-- I should let you get to work,” he says. 

“Thank you for the tea,” Viktor says. 

Yuuri nods. “Of course,” he answers. 

Viktor watches him go, unable to shake the feeling that he said something wrong. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> shiny nickel to whoever can id the work they're talking about


	14. Chapter 14

The tofu glides under his knife, peels away in a tender, strangely textured slice. 

Viktor looks at it, fascinated. 

He found  _ ponzu _ at the store fairly easily, as well as containers of other tofu. He drifted by them and wondered how he had never seen them before. He passes by them though-- clearly what Yuuri has made him is a different thing altogether.

He cuts the slice into manageable chunks and places them in a dish. Dresses them with slices of scallion and some of the soy and a little ponzu.

It has a strange texture. It’s firm but incredibly tender, almost sweet and nutty. It carries the flavor of the toppings very well. Food on Earth is strange and overwhelming sometimes, in how alien it can be. But this is quite good, and as he eats, his thoughts drift to Yuuri. 

Viktor wonders if Yuuri makes this often; if he ever uses the tofu at the store. Viktor wonders about Yuuri, going from present to quiet, to slinking upstairs. 

How something in his wide, brown eyes shifted. 

Viktor stashes the tofu in the fridge and brushes his teeth. He climbs into bed and looks at the wall. He wonders how hard it is to make tofu at home. He thinks about looking it up, but he’d really love to ask Yuuri about it, more than anything. 

Of course, he wants to, but--

Yuuri doesn’t bring tea. Yuuri comes in at a weird time and Viktor doesn’t see him. Or he’s in a phone call or in a meeting or he’s discussing something important with Phichit. 

Viktor thinks about sending Yuuri a text-- and he does, a few  _ hello! _ Or  _ good afternoon! _ . But Yuuri doesn’t answer and more than a week passes and Viktor feels, again, the almost cold, numb feeling familiar from childhood. The de-attaching, strange sort of hollowness of being forgotten-- of being left behind. 

For weeks, this happens, and Viktor lays awake in bed, curled around his own knees, trying to nurse himself past it. 

Viktor misses his mother acutely. Runs his hands over the ends of his hair, thinking of her. 

Viktor misses Yuuri, and he wishes he could figure out what he did.

* * *

 

Yuuri leaves the office and he goes for another swim. 

He swims until his shoulders scream at him and his fingers prune and his whole body screams for more air, for  _ rest. _

He takes a cab home and takes a shower and immediately goes to bed, his sleeping pill and exhaustion working in concert to  _ quiet _ the thought running circuit in his head. 

_ Waste of time, waste of time, waste of time _ .

Yuuri can’t get it to be quiet, so he makes all of his thoughts quiet and he has awful, strange dreams, the kind he hasn’t had in years.

He wakes up and he swims again. Showers fully at the gym and heads straight into work, walking straight past the coffee shop. 

Yuuri builds a routine out of it. He goes from swimming twice a week to swimming eight times a week and he goes from visiting the coffee shop regularly to avoiding it altogether. Yuuri comes in early and schedules his meetings for when Viktor comes in. He stays late. He works and he works and he works.

Phichit texts and Mari calls but he doesn’t talk; he doesn’t want to. He doesn’t want to go out drinking and he doesn’t want another talk about teaching skating.

Yuuri doesn’t talk to Viktor. Yuuri’s a blip on his radar. A blink.

Yuuri won’t last. A waste of time. 

Viktor sent a few messages, but Yuuri doesn’t even open them and nothing comes of it. Yuuri stops seeing him at work and it  _ works _ . Yuuri stops seeing Viktor and he keeps his head down and the anxiety doesn’t quiet but the guilt doesn’t chase him anymore. Yuuri’s a waste of time. Too short to be worth it. Won’t last. 

It works. 

Yuuri goes for a swim and he  gets in early and sits down at his desk and begins to work on wall text for the upcoming exhibit of Belgian altarpieces-- the exhibit will start in mid-November, and so will be seasonal for the Christmas celebration. He’s got the preliminary research with him and the information for provenance but he also needs some basically explanatory work on the actual use and idea of altarpieces; it’ll be unfamiliar to interplanetary visitors, most likely. 

Yuuri begins sorting information and working basic bones of ideas, to gradually shape the thing into what he wants. 

The office door opens and Viktor enters with Makkachin following on a leash. 

“Oh!” Viktor exclaims, seeing him. “Good morning, Yuuri! I have a gift for you.”

Yuuri feels a stab of guilt in his chest. “Good morning,” Yuuri replies. The thought circles him again. 

Viktor loops the end of Makkachin’s leash to his desk drawer and she pads to the cushion and settles heavily, easily. Viktor digs something out of his bag and hands it to Yuuri.

It’s a deep, dark color. Nearly black. He turns the jar and the liquid inside turns darkly, purple-blue-black. 

“Greenhouses here, the grow something similar to a  _ muskatnyy _ \-- a cross hybrid in a specialized greenhouse. Tastes like home. I made-- hmm...preserves? I like it in porridge.”

The jar is glass with a glass gasketed lid. It’s  _ very _ nice. 

Yuuri will have to return it, of course.

Yuuri looks up at Viktor. Viktor’s tall and beautiful. His silver hair is dewed slightly with early-morning rain, braided beautifully away from his fine, sharp face. His skin is dusted slightly with a purple flush; he must have been in a rush. 

Viktor’s deep blue eyes, impossibly friendly and kind. 

Viktor is nearly five hundred years old. 

“Thank you,” Yuuri answers. “I-- thank you.”

Viktor smiles back. “I must admit, my goal was not fully selfless,” he answers. He looks away slightly, into the drape of silvery bangs falling over his eyebrow. “I wanted to-- the tofu, you made, it was so good? Much better than what I found at the store. I tried reading for it a recipe but I had trouble understanding and my compost, it can take only so much more beans. Could you show me, how to make it?”

Yuuri swallows, his voice caught dryly in his throat, strangling him. 

Viktor’s eyes flicker back to him.

He looks so sincere. 

And Yuuri knows, he knows, that Viktor will get tired of him and he knows that not only will he not last within Viktor’s lifetime, he probably won’t within his own. Viktor will move on, to see other things-- other  _ people _ and other worlds. 

But he looks so sincere, right now.  

Yuuri nods, instead of saying anything.

Viktor’s smile remains. “Excellent!” he says. “I can find a sitter for Makka this Friday. Does this sound good?”

Yuuri nods again.

Viktor’s soft smile remains. “Good,” he says. “I am very excited.”


	15. Chapter 15

Yuuri cleans his bedroom. He cleans his bathroom and his living room and his kitchen; he clean his whole apartment feverishly, like he has every other day this week, because Viktor is coming on Friday and what if his apartment is a mess.

Yuuri buys soybeans and he checks that has the right amount of nigari and that the clothes are washed and that everything is soaked and ready. 

Yuuri checks and checks and checks and he can’t stop the awful feeling that sits at the top of his throat. 

Yuuri keeps swimming, and two days later, the work day wraps up and Viktor approaches him at his desk. 

Viktor looks a little rumpled after a long day of leading tours. His shirt-- a pale pink button down-- is open a little at the top, wrinkled ever so slightly. His white linen pants are creased a little, too, and his hair has begun to fall out of his braid a little, strands of hair drifting back into his face. 

He smiles. “Shall we?” He asks.

Yuuri nods, a couple of times. He switches off his computer monitor and stands, grabbing his bag and stepping out from behind his desk.

Viktor follows him at an easy lope, his parasol open in the early evening sun. It shades his face and features in a gentle, pale shadow. Yuuri looks from the sidewalk back to Viktor, a little behind him and a little to the right of him, periodically. 

“You live further away than I do,” Viktor tells him on the train, his parasol folded, his smile clear and steady. “Does it take long, in the morning?”   
Yuuri shakes his head. “I don’t drive, which helps,” he answers. “Living in the city is...expensive.”

Viktor nods, his graceful neck bowing slightly. “I am very lucky the museum provides my residence,” he says. “Even if it is too much room for me.”

Yuuri studies his hands wrapped around the cold pole in the center of the train. “I grew up in a...my family has owned a  _ ryokan _ for many years. A...mmmm, an inn? Around a hot spring. We lived in it so the house was-- in the slow season it was like we lived in one big house, all together, just us. My apartment….feels like a closet, sometimes.” He smiles a little, eyes unfocused on the detail of his fingers over pole. “I guess I envy you.”

Viktor smiles. “Do you have a big family, like Celestino did?”

Yuuri shrugs. “It’s Mom and Dad and Mari and I. Just the four of us,” he says. The train stops, and Viktor sways with brakes, shaking the momentum. “Do you have-- do you have brothers and sisters?”

Viktor shakes his head. Bows low to duck through the doorway between the train and the station. “Just me,” he says. “I was a difficult pregnancy and my parents did not wish to repeat it. And if I did have brothers and sisters, they would have probably come with me.”

“Right,” Yuuri says. 

They exit the station and Viktor’s parasol reemerges. They walk the last jaunt to Yuuri’s building, and Viktor looks up it with an almost fond expression. 

“I lived somewhere like this,” he says. “When my parents died and i had nowhere else to go.”

Yuuri slips inside with his keycard easily, and looks at something sad and soft on Viktor’s face. 

“How old were you, when it happened” Yuuri asks. 

Viktor shrugs. “It must have been. Hmm, I supposed nearly a hundred and fifty years ago,” he answers. “I miss them, terribly.”

Viktor’s head bows under the low stairwell ceilings. He steps down the hallway, following Yuuri to his apartment. Yuuri unlocks the door and Viktor steps in easily, follows as Yuuri takes off his shoes. 

Viktor practically has to stoop slip through Yuuri’s doorways and arches. 

* * *

Yuuri’s apartment is small but bright and clean. It’s warm in a way Viktor adores. Something a little careworn, loved strongly and strangely. His long, flat feet settle over the wooden floors, the boards cool in the air conditioning.

“Your apartment looks like you,” Viktor says, looking around. There’s a beautiful calligraphy study on one wall, the alphabet composed between carefully inked margins and notated and explained in careful, steady notes. Across from it is a beautiful print of the moon on a misty night-- it must be a watercolor, rendered carefully in soft washes of inks. 

Viktor looks back at the calligraphy. “Did you do these yourself?”

Yuuri nods, seems interested in saying something but goes quiet instead. A strained kind of silence bubbles up, broken by Yuuri smiling like a trod flower and saying, “Have you ever made soymilk?”

Viktor shakes his head. “We don’t have such things as these on Vara.”

Yuuri nods. He pulls a large bowl out of his fridge, filled with water and small, yellowish beans. He pulls back the cover and pulls one out-- it squishes between his fingers into two even pieces, the halves each with flat tops. . “You have to soak them, overnight, to get them soft enough to make into soymilk. But you can’t eat them right now because they’ll make you sick.”

Yuuri opens a pantry and pulls out two aprons-- one navy and heavy material and the other blue and white striped. He thrusts the striped one into Viktor’s hands and folds the top of the navy one over, ties it around his waist.

“You’ll want this,” he says. “For your clothes.”

Viktor slips the apron all the way on and looks over the top of the counter. Yuuri pulls out an appliance. “We have to grind the beans into liquid and then we cook it for the first time.” He pulls out a cup and a bowl and sets aside a few cups of the soaking liquid before pouring the beans into the blender and running it. It turns into something thick and white, with a nutty, strange smell. 

He turns the stove on and pulls out a wide, wooden stirrer. Adds the reserved water and a little more to the pot before adding in the bean mixture. 

His face is serious, thoughtful, as he works.

“You have to-- you have to cook it, the first time,” he says. “And after you cook the milk, you cook it into tofu.”

The kitchen is small. The countertops are a dingy sort of off white, but they look meticulously cleaned. Viktor has to curve his spine a bit to fit, but he doesn’t mind. There’s something special about being in Yuuri’s space, being near to him, being in his home. Yuuri’s hand over the stirrer. He bends to rest his arm on the hood over his stove, leaning into his arm, his glasses slipping down his nose. 

His heavy-lashed eyes blink slowly. 

He’s so beautiful. 

Steam begins to rise from the pot. 

Viktor licks his lips.

“You stir in a figure eight,” Yuuri says. “That’s how my mother did it.”

Yuuri turns, takes off his glasses, his skin looking almost dewy after the steam. 

Viktor feels himself bite his lip, overwhelmed. 

Yuuri’s eyes flick to his mouth, and then back to Viktor’s eyes. His body turns, more fully to face Viktor. 

“Viktor,” Yuuri says, very quietly, his voice catching on the syllables.

Viktor finds his hand drifting forward, shaking, to cradle Yuuri’s face. 

Yuuri’s red blood rises to the tops of his cheeks. He glows, in the yellow light of the stove hood. The rest of the kitchen is growing rapidly dim, the sun setting. His hair is an unsettled fringe about his face. The light catches it just barely, nearly a mandorla about him. 

So warm. Yuuri looks so warm. So beautiful. Yuuri looks so beautiful. 

His bites his lip again, right before Viktor tucks himself into Yuuri’s space and kisses him, as gently as he dares. 

He feels Yuuri’s breath stutter, and Viktor pulls away, so nervous, but Yuuri’s hands dash up to grasp tightly at Viktor’s arms and pull him closer, the softest sound tumbling out from his mouth, nearly a whine. 

Viktor feels a falling, rolling sort of feeling in his whole body. Something blooms from the roots of his hair to the heels of his feet. 

LIke breathing for the first time, he thinks. Like the beat of his heart, for the first time. 

Yuur pulls away, after a moment. “The soymilk,” he whispers, his voice rushed.

Vitktor nods, loosely.

Yuuri turns to turn the stove off, turns back to Viktor, and darts to the tips of his toes to kiss him again. 


	16. Chapter 16

Viktor is so much taller than him. 

Yuuri’s apartment is small; it feels smaller to him every day, smaller than the dorm he shared with Phichit for four years, even. Viktor steps into it and his head nearly grazes doorways, almost kisses ceilings. The counters seem to come closer to his hips than his hands and he has to bend his long, beautiful, graceful neck to fit, to look at Yuuri. It’s strange; Yuuri’s small apartment seems to bring Viktor ever closer and ever nearer to Yuuri’s helpless, unworthy orbit. 

But Viktor stands nearer, and Yuuri can feel him like a shadow over his shoulder, watching him stir the nascent soymilk. And Yuuri can feel his clear, blue eyes. 

Yuuri looks over at him, and Viktor has pulled his lip between his teeth. Yuuri looks back at his eyes and there’s something unfamiliar there. Something that Yuuri  _ wants _ . 

“Viktor,” Yuuri says, and his voice feels so loud; it rings and stutters through his head, a cacophony. 

Viktor’s long-fingered hand is gentle where he reaches out to rest along Yuuri’s face, his thumb sweeping over his cheekbone. The gesture is immediately  _ electric,  _ filling Yuuri to the top of his lungs with something loose and animal and brilliant. 

Viktor bites his lip again, something determined but unsure flickering there. 

Yuuri can’t tell if Viktor dives forward, if he pulls him in, or if Yuuri rushes to him, but they are kissing. Kissing, with Viktor’s hand cradling his face and his long, firm body pressed against Yuuri. Kissing, with his soft mouth pressed against his and his sweet breath hanging on Yuuri’s. Kissing, with the steam rising from the pot of soymilk. 

Yuuri pulls away. Viktor’s hair has fallen even more from his braid, into his eyes. A high, purple flush has come over his cheeks and has begun to settle into the hollow between his clavicle and his sternum; pinpoint blooms of lavender, mauve, and aubergine. 

Yuuri realizes that the strange, tight feeling in his hands is the curl of his fingers (tight) into the fabric of Viktor’s sleeves.

“The soymilk,” he stammers, and he switches the stove off before his impulse control is overcome and he surges forward to kiss Viktor again.

Viktor’s hands move from his face to his hips, settling there heavily. Viktor sighs, his voice crackling between them light and beautiful. Like lightning. 

Viktor crashes into the counter behind him, bangs his head into the cabinets, and breaks from the kiss with a soft  _ oof! _

Yuuri pulls away, and looks at him and his heartbeat stutters, terrified. 

Viktor, too tall in his kitchen, rubbing his head, practically folded with his back against the counter,  _ smiles _ . 

He says something in rolling, tumbling Varan before he shakes his head and says, “Oh dear.” he smiles again and pulls himself away from the counter. His voice is light and beautiful. He is beautiful, too tall in Yuuri’s kitchen, too  _ beautiful _ , too  _ big _ , too  _ real _ . His smile is so warm and beautiful. “Maybe we should be not in the kitchen, I think?”

“Your blood is purple and you live forever,” Yuuri blurts, and as suddenly as it leaps out of his mouth, he covers his mouth with his hands, desperate to place them back in. 

Viktor looks at him, and there’s maybe six inches between them but Yuuri feels an awful sort of distance between them. Fundamentally.

“Yuuri?” Viktor asks.

His voice is so painfully soft.  _ Hurt _ . 

“I--” Yuuri says, his voice getting caught in his throat. “I-- I’m going to  _ die _ .” 

Viktor’s features crumple. “Yuuri are you sick?” He asks, his voice rushes. 

“No, Viktor-- no, I’m just-- I’ll die. It-- I can’t-- it’s what….it’s what people from here  _ do _ ,” he says. “You don’t--” Yuuri looks away, eyes settling on his strainer lined with cheesecloth, eyes wandering to a framed picture of him and Phichit, eyes wandering to the handle of his fridge, eyes finally closing tight. “I’ll die, and you’ll live forever, and I’ll just be a waste of time and-- you don’t want to be here. I’ll die and you’ll live forever and I’ll just be a waste. I--” Yuuri feels his knuckles and fingertips  _ ache _ with how tightly his fists are clenched. “I’ve been trying to-- you’ll get bored, and leave, and I’ll die. It’s just a  _ waste _ before you leave and you’ll leave.”  Yuuri takes a breath and he’s surprised how it shakes inside of him; wavers. “You’ll  _ leave _ .”

The only sound in the kitchen is the low rumbling of the city outside. 

“Why?” Viktor asks. “Why would I leave?”

Yuuri takes a deep breath and opens his eyes again. 

And Viktor’s still there, in his tiny kitchen and his  _ tiny _ apartment.

Viktor’s nose and eyes are blotchy, violet tones from blood flow. “Why would I leave?” he asks again. “Vara? I left. It never...wanted me, so I left because there was nothing remained. My  _ tetka _ and  _ dyad’ya _ never met me and all of their children, too, and my mother’s mother never met me and my father’s mother died ago. I wanted to be here and I came and I wanted to-- I want you.”  He crosses his arms over his chest, gripping his own biceps. The apron stretches a little. 

“I came to Earth and I met you and Yuuri-- you are so bright and graceful and...I lose the words, in this language, to tell you how you are,” he continues. “Your singing and your dancing and your braiding and your cooking and your laughter and your tofu and-- oh, ay, Yuuri. I-- not since my parents lived have I been so….have I  _ wanted _ so much to--”

Viktor says something in Varan, his hand flying up to pull his hair away from his face. “There is nowhere else I want to be. That’s why I’m  _ here _ ,” he says, in English. 

Viktor’s eyes drift back to Yuuri’s eyes, hold him there. “You will die,” he says. “I don’t have….forever, with you. I have now. I want now. I want all the now and tomorrow with you I can have. I lived so long alone.” 

Viktor swallows

“I have lived so long alone,” Viktor murmurs, his voice soft. “Please, let me have what time I can with you. Please. I wouldn’t leave you. I couldn’t leave you. You would leave me, before I could think to leave you.”

The light shifts, as it is prone to. Darkness edging slowly into the space.

Yuuri is so terribly scared. 

Viktor so real and so beautiful and so open in front of him. 

Yuuri is so scared. 

Yuuri is so scared, but he looks at open and beautiful and  _ vulnerable _ Viktor.

Yuuri is so scared, and his voice is heavy in his throat, trapped against his total desire and his consuming fear.

Yuuri is so scared, but he can’t find it in himself to pull away. 

 


	17. Chapter 17

Viktor feels  _ raw _ . He feels burst open and destroyed, something egregious and hollow gnawing at the center of his chest, something empty where he keeps his heart, his lungs. 

Viktor’s never talked to someone like this before-- the closest he’s come is talking to his mother. He’s never been this close, in someone’s space, near their body. He’s never told so much of himself to someone, and the feeling hurts in a way he can’t quite describe. It aches, almost physically. 

There’s the rawness but there’s also a  _ lightness _ he’s never quite felt before.

Yuuri doesn’t say anything for a long time, his brows furrowing and unfurrowing, his mouth tentatively opening every once in a while, as if to try to form the beginning of a statement, trying to find traction. 

His brown eyes visit and leave Viktor’s face occasionally. The countertop digs into his back and the ceiling hangs too near overhead.

Time shifts. Golden evening light passes and instead of standing on the precipice between evening and night, night slips into the kitchen, settles between them. Twines between their legs like the growth of a strange vine. 

Viktor thinks maybe a minute or so has passed, before he says, “I feel like maybe I truly ruined the occasion to make tofu.”

Yuuri laughs, in strange sort of way. Like clearing his throat but also shaking off tears. He tosses his head and rubs his nose. 

“It’s okay,” he says. “I’m not very good at it anyway. You should see my mom and my sister.”

He smiles, the shape crooked and vulnerable on his face. Viktor loves how Yuuri looks when he smiles. He hates how he looks when his brown eyes go nervous and unsure. 

Yuuri clears his throat. “I need to-- blow my nose,” he says. “And sit down.”

He leaves the kitchen, slipping to the bathroom, and Viktor drifts out of the kitchen and to the living room, lit itself by warm, golden lamps. 

Viktor realizes that nothing has hurt like this since his parents died, but this is different. 

Yuuri comes out of the bathroom a moment later, looking a little different, and he says, “Would you-- would you sit on the couch? With me?”

Viktor swallows and nods. 

Yuuri nods too. 

Yuuri’s couch is smaller than Viktor’s, and the material is less nice and it’s lumpy, but Viktor sits down and Yuuri sits down beside him and the shape of the couch eases Yuuri practically into Viktor’s lap, his shoulder digging into Viktor’s side, his beautiful hands curled in at the knuckles, nails against the material of the couch. 

“Your sister?” Viktor asks. “Mari?”   
Yuuri nods, makes a small noise of assent. 

“Is she older than you? Or younger?” Viktor asks.

“Older,” Yuuri answers. “By a few years.”

“Is she like you?” He asks. 

Yuuri laughs. “Not really. She’s-- she’s calm. She never...I don’t think Mari has  _ ever _ been scared. And she’s good at everything she puts her mind to.”

Viktor looks at Yuuri’s hand, so near. Feels a hungry sort of itching across his own fingertips, wanting to reach out. To hold.

“And you said she makes good tofu,” Viktor says.

“The best,” Yuuri says. “She just-- I wouldn’t know how to explain what she does. I do the same things but she just...she makes it sing.”

Viktor finds himself staring at the crown of Yuuri’s head, the whorl of dark hair at the top. 

“I always wanted siblings,” Viktor murmurs. “Friends, really.”

Yuuri shifts, looking up, into his eyes. “I wish I knew,” he says. “I wish I knew what to say.” Yuuri’s teeth curl cautiously over his lip, before he presses his lips together, chewing on them. “I’m your friend,” he says. 

Viktor feels his heart tighten. Feels the words trapped in his throat--  _ Yuuri, you are more _ .  _ My friend and more.  _

But instead Viktor says, “Thank you.”

Yuuri’s head bobs slightly. He is-- he could reach out easily, rest his hand on Viktor’s chest, lay on top of him, be so  _ near  _ to him. Viktor wishes he would. 

“And Phichit,” Yuuri continues.. “He’s your friend, too. I know you have his phone number. And Chris. Chis is your friend. And Yakov, maybe. I think Yakov likes you. And Makkachin.”

“And you,” VIktor says. 

“Yes,” Yuuri says, his voice almost brittle. He looks away, settles back into Viktor’s side. “And me.”

Viktor looks at Yuuri’s hand, and after a moment, he carefully takes it, winding his too-big hands through Yuuri’s.. 

“I miss Mari, though,” Yuuri says. “And Ma and Dad and  _ home _ .”

“What is home like?” Viktor asks. “You said it was an inn but...what’s it  _ like _ .”

“Old,” Yuuri says. “Maybe not to you, but my grandmother was born in my bedroom. And sort of old fashioned. Big kitchen, that we could see into, so I could always see Ma over the charcoal or Dad washing dishes. And it smelled like water. Sometimes I would sneak into the baths, when everyone was asleep and just...take in the smell of the water and cedar. A lot right after school, when I missed it most. After college. And there’s this sound, of my feet, on the floors. It doesn’t sound like anything else.”

“Cedar?” Viktor asks.

“A kind of wood,” Yuuri answers. “It smells good.”

Viktor’s tongue feels heavy in his mouth. He doesn’t say anything, and Yuuri doesn’t either. They just lean against each other.

VIktor can hear Yuuri’s breath, and after a while, it evens into slow, soft huffs.

Viktor’s eyes feel heavy. Yuuri is warm and relaxed beside him. His voice rings in his ears. 

His apartment is warm and comfortable and full of  _ him _ , instead of empty and strange and only full of Viktor and his aloneness. 

Viktor falls asleep easily. 


	18. Chapter 18

“You should tell him about your skating,” Phichit says, hefting the bowling ball into his hands and strolling up to the lane.

Phichit bowls naturally, the ball losing from his fingers easily. The ball is pale blue, the surface shiny but not glittery. The ball is light, only twelve pounds. 

Phichit also bowls  _ badly _ , and the ball immediately swerves into the gutter, gliding all the way down.

Chris turns to Yuuri. “I don’t know why he insists on going bowling,” he says.

Yuuri fiddles anxiously with the straw in his coke. 

This was a mistake. 

He needed to talk to  _ someone _ about what happened-- about waking up on his couch with Viktor’s broad chest under his cheek and hand, a pot of rapidly spoiling soymilk sitting half-cooked on his stove, about what they said, about what  _ Viktor  _ said-- but Phichit had  _ work _ and then he had a  _ date _ and then he had  _ plans _ so Yuuri has found himself in a bowling alley with Chris and Phichit and Otabek. 

So Yuuri has told not only Phichit what happened but also Chris and Otabek, in this bowling alley, and Yuuri wants to stop talking and stop  _ existing _ , generally, altogether. 

Otabek looks at the scoreboard with the sort of terrible intensity that only he seems able to gather.

“This is a coworker?” he asks. It is the first time Otabek has said something since he told the clerk what his shoes size was. 

“Sort of,” Chris says. “Different departments and Yuuri is probably technically his supervisor but--”   
Otabek’s frown intensifies. 

“But there’s...this isn’t  improper,” Chris continues. “Yuuri’s not taking advantage of him, and Viktor isn’t either.”

Otabek’s lips press into a thin line. He looks back to the scoreboard.

“I am not sure I like this,” Otabek says, ever brutally truthful.

“This is Viktor,” Chris says. “Not Yurio. He’s not a  _ child _ and I don’t think he should be treated like one. Yuuri wants something more and Viktor seems prepared to give it to him.”

The  _ right _ ? Hangs unspoken at the end of the sentence.

“He’s-- but Chris, you’ve met him. He’s so--”

“He’s a tall nerd who likes  _ ancient _ sporting events and paintings and dogs,” Chris says. “You’re a former world-champion figure skater with a lead job at one of the most prestigious institutions in the world.”

“He’s smart and funny and  _ beautiful _ and he has a great dog,” Yuuri says. “I’m a fat failure with a go-nowhere athletic career and a dead-end job at a stupid tourist trap.”

“This sounds, I think, improper,” Otabek says. 

Yuuri buries his face in his hands and groans. 

“Otabek hush, this isn’t Mars and Yuuri just gets the art that Viktor talks about; he doesn’t evaluate his performance or anything like that,” Chris says. “And Yuuri, double-hush. You’re one of the most impressive people I know, but even if you  _ weren’t,  _ you’d still be smart and generous and kind and deeply deserving of therapy for your self-esteem and and body issues.”

Phichit saunters back to the chairs. Otabek rises and grabs his ball. 

“I’m serious,” Phichit says. “You should tell him.”

“You’re worse than Mari,” Yuuri murmurs. “I don’t-- I finished-- that part of my life is  _ over _ .”

“I know,” Phichit says. He grabs a piece of pizza from the box; the cheese is cold by now but Phichit seems pleased with it, taking a big bite. “You’ve told me. But he made himself vulnerable and you wanted to do something similar sooooooo...I mean….”

“Fuck,” Yuuri murmurs. 

“I know,” Chris says, taking a sip of his beer. “I hate it when he’s right.”

“Oh, speak of the devil,” Phichit says, flitting up and dashing off, and Yuuri turns and--

Viktor is standing with his hair piled on top of his head in a large bun. He’s holding a pair of bowling shoes, looking baffled. Phichit is walking past him to grab something, and Viktor is blushing. 

He smiles a little. 

Yuuri smiles back. He waves, to Viktor. 

Viktor slips over to bench and sits across from Yuuri, beside Chris. 

Viktor says something in rolling Varan and Chris snorts, rolls his eyes. Says something back. 

Viktor flushes, but he says, “This is very strange! Phichit invited me but I have never done a thing like this thing before. I am glad I did not bring Makkachin. She would not like the noise.”   
Otabek rolls a strike, and Viktor flinches at the sound of the pins falling, his hand flying up to the right side of his chest, where Yuuri knows his heart is.

Otabek returns to the benches. “Your turn,” he says, seriously.

Yuuri nods and stands on the slick-bottomed shoes, grabs his ball and sidles to the line.

“ _ Davai, Yuuri!,”  _ Viktor exclaims, and Yuuri feels the bowling ball slide from his fingertips and slide like thunder down the lane. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> get you a man who can do both


	19. Chapter 19

Weeks pass, and VIktor keeps remembering waking up on Yuuri’s couch, in the small hours just before the rising of the sun, with Yuuri pressed against him like a warm, steady weight. Yuuri’s breath even and slow; his heartbeat a quiet, lazy drum. His eyes closed and his brow uncreased. So close, to him. Viktor remembers Yuuri asleep, and he remembers falling back asleep easily with Yuuri on top of his chest, his hand spread over Viktor’s own heart. 

Viktor also remembers waking up again, hours later, with Yuuri in the shower. Putting on his shoes and slipping out of the apartment, riding the train back to his own house.

Weeks pass, and Viktor thinks of this and tries to find the things to say to Yuuri, but Yuuri stops bringing him tea-- Viktor perpetually caught up in the exhibit downstairs. Viktor tries texting him, but every time he sits down to make a message, it fumbles out strangely, and he doesn’t send it. 

Viktor feels  _ new _ distance, not closeness, and it hurts like a toothache. 

He’s leaving the museum on a Friday when Phichit jogs up to him and says, “You’re coming bowling this evening.”

“What?” Viktor asks, struggling with his bag. “Bowling?”   
“You’re coming,” Phichit says. “Mandatory social engagement. Me and Chris and Otabek are all going. I’ll pay for your shoes. Let me text you the address.”

“I-- okay?” Viktor says. “Thank you?”

Phichit nods, pulling out his phone. “Be there at like, nine. Don’t bring your dog; she wouldn’t like it.”

Viktor nods again. “Thank you?” He replies, once more, and Phichit nods less like a  _ nod _ and more like a military salute. 

Phichit puts his phone away before calling out, “Chris!” and jogging off in the opposite direction. 

Which is how Viktor finds himself in a totally different part of town, renting shoes from a stranger and stumbling, too tall and too strange, to an area populated by Phichit, Chris, a severe looking stranger, and Yuuri. 

Viktor doesn’t like bowling at all. It’s horrendously loud and the lights are strange and he doesn’t seem to be very good at it. He drops the ball into the gutter consistently and he hates how the grease from the lane transfers inevitably to his palm. 

But he likes Yuuri, and he loves how Yuuri laughs when Viktor watches, yet again, his ball tumble useless away from the pins. He likes Yuuri’s eyes and he likes Yuuri trading conversation back and forth, in English and Japanese. 

Viktor hates beer, but Yuuri seems to enjoy it. Viktor’s not into pizza, but Yuuri seems to enjoy it. 

And Viktor loves the person Yuuri is when Yuuri is enjoying things unselfconsciously and with his heart full. 

Yuuri watches the scoreboard and he reels with Phichit’s arm catching at his waist or with the weight of his ball hefted into his hand. 

And Yuuri smiles at him across the noise. 

Yuuri steps to the lane, and Viktor watches him. His back is tall and proud, and his thighs are tensed and his feet are delicately spread and--

“What are your intentions, with Yuuri?” Someone beside him asks. 

Viktor turns. It’s a man with severe features, a little younger than Phichit, he guesses. He has dark hair, cut close and severely kept. His eyes are flinty and hard; eyes that hold a weight.  

Viktor looks at him. “Excuse me?” he asks.

“I am Otabek Altin and I know Yuuri,” he continues. “Are your intentions proper?”

Viktor looks at Otabek for a long moment. “I am not sure I understand,” he says. 

Otabek searches him for a moment, before saying, “I am from Mars. I was born of there. I am told this is why I am habituated to be direct, and also the origin of my concerns. Where I am from, people will return from long work shifts and make promises they do not intend to keep. Many a broken heart is the result of this.” Otabek leans forward, his clear eyes intense and weary. “Yuuri does not wear heartbreak well. I am reticent to allow you to engage him in a situation where it may be immanent. Are your intentions proper?”

Viktor looks at Otabek, at how utterly serious he is, and Viktor realizes that Chris and Phichit are both listening intently. 

“I would die with Yuuri,” he says, and he means it. 

Otabek seems to assess this, and this seems to be fine. He leans back into his own seat on the bench. He takes a sip of his beer and nods. 

“Viktor,” he says. “I believe it is your turn.”

All of Yuuri’s pins fall, and at the end of the lane, he throws both of his hands into the air in joy. Otabek  _ grins _ , the motion still flinty and hard but welcoming in an odd way. “Yuuri,” he calls, his voice clear. “Has he not suffered enough? Show this man how to bowl properly.”

Viktor stands and looks at Yuuri, and Yuuri looks back at him, with something nervous but tender resting in his warm, brown eyes. 

“So, the trick is,” Yuuri says, “to not grip the ball with your fingers. Let them  _ sink _ but not grip, it should want to roll away from you, delicately.”

Viktor adjusts his grip some. 

Yuuri sidles his hand atop Viktors, and helps him draw back. “And your elbow, it should graze your side when you swing through and release it.”

Viktor turns to look behind himself, at Yuuri.

He nods. 

Yuuri nods again. 

Viktor doesn’t get all of the pins, but he does clip some of them and he  _ finally _ shows up on the scoreboard.

Viktor turns back, to look at Yuuri, and Yuuri is smiling. 

Viktor feels a fluttering in his chest, on the side opposite his heart.

* * *

 

Viktor gets a little better at bowling, but mostly the night stretches into beer and laughter and easy, warm companionship. The alley begins to begin to close, so they gather up and head outside, and Yuuri, again, finds himself tangled into Viktor’s space, walking absently down a darkened street. He’s only sort of tipsy this time, not  _ too _ horrendously drunk.

“Viktor,” he says. “Can you come home with me?”

Viktor doesn’t quite  _ gasp _ but there’s a stutter in his breathing. “Of course,” he answers, after a moment. “I would be delighted.”

Yuuri smiles, and they wave goodbye to everyone and walk the five blocks to Yuuri’s building. Yuuri feels looselimbed the whole way, but Viktor doesn’t seem to mind supporting him too badly. 

“I’m glad you came bowling,” Yuuri says. “You surprised me.” He fumbles with the key to his building.

Viktor laughs. “You surprised me, did you know?”

They stumble up the stairs and into the apartment and Yuuri deposits Viktor onto the couch. 

He is, upon reflection, much more drunk than he thought he was. 

Yuuri pats Viktor on the shoulder, leaning over him, into his space. Viktor’s cheeks flush again, that beautiful shade of purple. 

“Lady Agnew, of Lochnaw,” Yuuri says, the mention tumbling out of his mouth, before he can stop it. “Have you seen her portrait? Singer-Sargent. You would love her.”

“Is this what you want to show me?” Viktor asks.

Yuuri shakes his head. “No,” he says. “Stay here.”

He brushes against the short hallway, walking to his bedroom. He opens his closet and looks at the Box.

He pulls it down and walks into the living room. He sits down on the couch, beside Viktor. Sits crosslegged, with the Box between them. 

“I used to do something else,” Yuuri says. “I used to skate.”

His hands shake a little, resting on the top of the Box. 

He pulls off the lid. 

“I didn’t-- after I stopped, I got rid of a bunch of it. But I didn’t want to--” He closes his eyes, hoping if he can’t see it, the explaining of it will be easier. “I had to stop, but I didn’t want to and...I hate being reminded, but--” 

Yuuri opens his eyes. He parts the tissue paper in the box and pulls out the medal. Dark bronze. One or two other medals and some photographs and the strange, stretchy material of a costume-- the blue suit from his highest-scoring program.

Yuuri feels the heaviness of the medal at the tips of his fingers, and then he reaches across and grabs Viktor’s hands, pressing the medal into his grasp. 

“It ended...badly,” Yuuri says. “But I was...I was almost pretty good at it.” He laughs, reflexively. The sound feels bitter and strange.

Yuuri hates this feeling. 

Viktor looks at the medal for a long time, his long fingers brushing over its surface. Viktor looks back up at him, his eyes wide and bright and fascinated. 

“Yuuri,” he says, and Viktor has a way of holding his name in his mouth that is like a prayer, like it is a treasure. 

Yuuri worries his lip between his teeth, and he says, eventually, “Do you want to-- do you want to see?”

Viktor looks from the medal back to Yuuri, reverently. 

“ _ Yes _ ,” he says, his voice very, very soft.

Yuuri gets up, unsteady and grabs his laptop from his desk. Stumbles back to the couch and sits back down. He moves the box onto the table and pulls up a video. 

“This was...this was my program at my senior debut,” Yuuri says, hitting play. “I’m-- I was so nervous.” He laughs again. “I couldn’t stop shaking and I had just thrown up, in the bathroom.”

Viktor looks at the video, holding the computer intently. His eyebrows furrow. 

The program rolls on. Yuuri hates watching it. He hates how small and nervous he looks. He hates how  _ bad _ he is at this. Yuuri has trouble remembering if he hates himself more now or if he hates himself more from the past. 

“Yuuri,” Viktor says, “Yuuri I have--”

“I fell,” Yuuri says, laughing. “I fell a  _ lot _ . I miss flying but I don’t miss the bruises.”

Viktor looks from the screen back to Yuuri, and his expression shifts, and Yuuri realizes that he feels something, he feel something hot and uncomfortable on his face. 

Yuuri wipes away tears, and he realizes suddenly that his face feels swollen and hot. 

Yuuri feels something in him  _ burst _ . 

Viktor takes Yuuri into his arms, moving away the computer. He brushes Yuuri’s tears away, and he murmurs something in a low litany; an assortment of syllables in Varan. 

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Yuuri says. “I’m sorry. I lied. I lied to you. I’m a-- a failure. I’m sorry. I haven’t been-- I wasn’t honest. I’m sorry. I’m not-- I’m a failure and I’m just pretending and now you  _ know _ and there’s no reason for you to stay.” Yuuri laughs, Yuuri sobs. 

“Yuuri,” Viktor says, holding his face. Yuuri sees Viktor and Viktor’s blue, blue eyes reach his. “Yuuri what  _ failure _ ?” He asks. He gestures to the computer. “Yuuri you  _ fly!  _ And you--” Viktor picks up the medal from his lap and he presses it, almost urgently, into Yuuri’s hands. “You have a greater accomplishment than I could ever dream to have, Yuuri, and this thing you did-- Yuuri, this is not failure. This is-- I cannot describe or imagine the...the accomplishment that something of this is.”

Viktor looks at Yuuri, and there’s something almost devastated in his expression. “Yuuri, I would never-- nothing could make me desire to leave you, but your-- your grace? Your  _ work _ ? Your effort, your beauty, your-- this thing that you did? I would be such a  _ fool _ to… to leave for such a thing.”

Yuuri shakes his head. “There was no-- I wasn’t good enough. It wasn’t worth it. I was a waste of all that time and all that money, I was a waste.” 

Yuuri hates this feeling-- one that has hung on his shoulders since his first competition at thirteen. This ugly thing he can’t bury.

“Yuuri, you are the most extraordinary person I have ever known,” Viktor says. “And nothing of you could ever be called a waste. Nothing could make me want to leave. Yuuri, nothing could make me want to go.You are no waste. You are no waste, Yuuri.”

Viktor takes Yuuri’s hand carefully. His thumb brushes over Yuuri’s fingers. 

Yuuri’s hand tightens in Viktor’s reflexively. 

Yuuri cries for the first time in years for his skating career. For what could have been-- for what  _ he _ could have been. He cries and cries, and Viktor holds him, and after a long time, the tears stop and Yuuri is just  _ tired _ .

Viktor’s hand is warm over his. His shoulder is warm and steady. 

“If one of us is going to cry a lot every time we come to my apartment, I think we should stop coming here,” Yuuri says, after a while.

Viktor laughs. “Thank you,” he says, softly. His voice is sweet and tender in Yuuri’s ear. “Thank you for sharing that with me.”

Yuuri yawns.

Viktor follows suit.

“Come on,” Yuuri says, sitting up. “Let’s go to bed.”


	20. Chapter 20

Yuuri says it, and Viktor registers it, and after a moment, he slips his arm under Yuuri’s back and knees and he stands up and he holds Yuuri close.

Yuuri’s eyes go wide before he brings up his hands and hides behind them, laughing a little wetly. 

“This is a  _ terrible _ idea,” Yuuri says, laughing, covering his eyes with his hands. 

“Your bedroom cannot be far and you are quite light, my Yuuri,” Viktor answers. It’s true. Yuuri is smaller than Viktor, lighter in his body. Viktor loves the weight of Yuuri against his arms, into his back and body. 

“It’s just down the hall,” Yuuri answers, laughing more, his voice on the teetering precipice between his laughter and his tears. 

Viktor loves Yuuri’s laughing voice.

Viktor stalks down the hall, past a bathroom and nudges the door open with his foot. 

Yuuri’s bed is small and unmade. Viktor figures that if he were closer to Yuuri’s height, it would be better, but it seems short though wide. Viktor steps carefully over the laundry on the floor, avoids knocking over a pile of books, dodges a glass of water on the floor. The room is dim, lit only by the residual light of the streetlight outside. There’s some furniture that seems vague in the light. It doesn’t look like it was prepared for this, like Yuuri thought this could happen. It’s spontaneous. 

Viktor places Yuuri carefully on his bed. Yuuri smiles, his eyes drifted shut with sleepiness. 

Yuuri tugs Viktor onto the bed with him. Viktor sits. 

“Stay with me?” Yuuri asks, his voice soft. 

Viktor nods. "Of course," he murmurs.

Yuuri takes Viktor’s hand in his. His fingers worry over Viktor’s digits, his knuckles, his fingertips. 

“Do you need clothes to sleep in?” Yuuri asks.

Viktor laughs. “I do not think yours would fit me,” he answers. “I am okay.”

“If you’re comfortable, you can sleep in your boxers,” Yuuri says. “Not just in your clothes.”

Viktor smiles. “Okay,” he says. 

He pulls his shirt off over his head, but it catches on his bun and the motion is interrupted. He manages to take the shirt off and his bun out simultaneously, and he has to brush his hair from his eyes. It tickles his shoulders. 

Not for the first time, he curses his hair. 

Yuuri chuckles though. “It’s so long,” he says. “Do you cut it often?”

Viktor shakes his head. “No,” he answers. “Not in a long time.”

His mother’s hands looped through the scissors, slowly removing length. It’s been years since she cut his hair.

“I’m glad you wear it up,” Yuuri says, removing his own shirt. “I like seeing you.”

He tosses his shirt away. There’s a gesture, his hands grasping his elbows, his head bowed and looking away. His silhouette vague in the darklight. 

“I like  _ you _ ,” Yuuri says, his voice quiet but serious. 

Viktor feels something in his chest like soaring. Lightness in all of his limbs and in his head and in his face. 

“I like you, Katsuki Yuuri,” he answers. 

Viktor’s not quite sure how it happens. Yuuri leaning over him, his hand cradling his face, his lips on his own. Viktor’s hand on Yuuri’s hip, his thumb resting on his waist. Yuuri kissing him, Yuuri  _ kissing _ him. Yuuri’s kiss so  _ gentle _ and languid, almost lazy. Spreading warmth through his body, a fuzzy sort of warmth to his limbs. 

“Ah!” Viktor exclaims, hitting his head on Yuuri’s headboard. 

Yuuri pulls away, and they both sit up, Yuuri straddling Viktor’s legs and Viktor leaning against the headboard. 

Yuuri cards his fingers through Viktor’s hair, suddenly, “Are you hurt?” He asks.

“My Yuuri, I am quite sturdy, I promise,” he answers.

Yuuri kisses him again. 

“Wait,” Yuuri says, pulling away, “let me--” 

He dismounts himself from Viktor’s lap and stands to take off his pants. Viktor takes the opportunity to do the same thing. 

Yuuri climbs back into bed, this time curled into Viktor’s side, Viktor’s arm draped over his shoulders. 

“Yuuri,” Viktor says. “I should be honest with you.”

“I’m tired,” Yuuri says, yawning.

“Yuuri, I--” Viktor says.  

“You can’t leave when I wake up and shower,” Yuuri says. 

“I won’t,” Viktor says. “I promise, but I have to tell you--”

“Good night,” Yuuri says, his voice heavy and sleepy. “I like you.” He nuzzles his face into the crook of Viktor’s arm. His eyes closed. His expression slack. 

“Yuuri?” Viktor asks. “Can I tell you something?”

But there’s no response, just soft, deep breath. 

“Good night, my Yuuri,” Viktor replies. “I love you.”


	21. Chapter 21

Yuuri wakes up slowly, the window letting the morning light in. He blinks his eyes open, and is full of a warm, gentle sort of feeling. Contentment, down to his bones, syrupy and heavy and good. 

Yuuri blinks, and he realizes he’s curled against Viktor’s bare chest, his arm draped over Yuuri’s own shoulders. Viktor’s long, long hair is down, and his head is rolled, lax, to the side. He’s sitting up, against Yuuri’s headboard, his feet all the way at the end of the bed. Too long by far for Yuuri’s queen. 

Viktor’s features are so soft, so relaxed. Viktor is  _ always _ beautiful, is the thing about Viktor. Always purple-blue-silver and unflustered and tall, always graceful and gentle and sweet. But something of him pulls at Yuuri’s heart right now, something to how eased and relaxed he is, even uncomfortable on Yuuri’s too-small bed. 

Yuuri sits up slowly, stretching. He feels a stab of self-betrayal-- no good shirts in sight and he’s already so much rounder and  _ fatter _ than he would like anyone to see, much less Viktor. He glances around, looking for his glasses and then maybe a shirt, when Viktor stirs.

Yuuri looks at him, and watches, rapt, as Viktor’s eyes slowly flutter open and his mouth opens into a wide yawn. 

Yuuri realizes that Viktor’s lips are also the soft lavender color of his blush. 

“Good morning, Katsuki Yuuri,” Viktor greats, his voice soft and still heavy with sleep. 

Viktor shifts and stretches, his long arms tensioned with the stretch. He yawns again and turns and looks at Yuuri. 

Yuuri swallows, dryly.

Even Viktor being Viktor-- graceful, beautiful,  _ otherworldly _ \-- Viktor looks so utterly ordinary. Even too big for his bed and purple-silver, Viktor pulls sleep away from his eyes and he yawns and he’s only wearing his underwear. 

“You stayed,” Yuuri says. 

VIktor looks confused for a moment, before he shakes his head. “Of course,” he answers. “I didn’t want to go.”

Yuuri smiles. 

Viktor turns to more fully face him, and he says, his voice grave, “Yuuri, I must tell you something; I fear I have not fully been honest.”

Yuuri’s stomach plummets. 

There’s always a catch.

Yuuri takes a deep breath. 

“I already knew you were a skater,” Viktor says. “Chris told me. I already knew and I saw your-- your routines and I saw  _ all _ of them and I didn’t know how to tell you.”

Yuuri looks away from Viktor. Closes his eyes tight and tries to calm his heartbeat, to stave off the wave of cold anxiety. 

“That bad, huh?” Yuuri asks. 

“What?” Viktor asks. “Yuuri-- no, I had never seen such a thing as your skating. It was...so much more beautiful...I could not imagine something as beautiful as your skating. It did not look anything like...oh, Yuuri.” Viktor reaches out, his hands landing on Yuuri’s arms. 

Yuuri looks at Viktor’s blue eyes. 

“Yuuri, your skating...it looked like the loneliness I felt my whole life. Not just the excellence of a body but the artistry. I didn’t...it was so  _ personal _ . And I couldn’t...I didn’t know how to tell you or ask you about it,” he continues. “I meant everything I said of it. Everything I said of  _ you _ , these were true. But I...I already knew. I’m sorry.”

Yuuri feels a tired sigh fall from his mouth. He lets his eyes roll closed. 

“I wish,” he murmurs, “I could get them to take those down.”

There’s a moment, before Viktor says, “Yuuri, are you...are you angry?”

Yuuri shakes his head. Looks up and Viktor, who has gone from looking serious to  _ devastated _ . 

“No, Viktor,” he says. “No, not at all, I promise. I’m just...tired. But I’m okay.”

And this is true.

And Viktor’s seen the trainwreck-- the gasping chasm of failure that hangs on Yuuri like a bad shadow-- and he’s still here.

He’s still so ordinary in such a beautiful way. In such a way that fills Yuuri to the top of his chest. Feeling this way feels like breathing or blinking, and Yuuri cannot believe he never did this before.Viktor in his bedroom with him, in the soft hours of the morning, only in their underwear is somehow  already reflexive. Already, Yuuri thinks he cannot live without it.   

“Can I move in with you?” Yuuri asks, suddenly.

Viktor smiles.

Yuuri covers his mouth. Closes his eyes. Grits his teeth. Tries to find the way to make this better-- to make this not  _ crazy _ . 

“My bed is too small for you,” Yuuri finally says. “I want to sleep with you more.”

“Okay,” Viktor says. 

Yuuri opens his eyes. 

Viktor is still smiling. His eyes crinkled at the edges with the smile. 

“Viktor,” Yuuri breathes. 

Viktor leans through the scant space between them and kisses him.

Yuuri feels something like carbonation in his chest, and it feels how he thinks he was meant to feel all along. 


	22. Chapter 22

“He asked, just like that?” Chris asks, both of his eyebrows darting up over the edge of his clear resin glasses. “To move in with you?” 

Viktor grins, and he feels insufferable, but he can’t  _ help  _ it. It’s  _ happening _ . It’s happening to him. 

“Yes,” Viktor answers. 

They’ve met up at a little cafe near Viktor’s house. It was actually Chris' idea, to do something just the two of them, and Viktor said yes automatically. No one other than Chris and Yuuri have really asked to spend time with him more than once, and the prospect of this is overwhelming and fascinating and exciting. Viktor's never really had friends before. 

 It’s a beautiful space, built in dark woods with rich, strange detailing. The ceilings are comfortably high and the tables chairs are themselves beautiful. The wide windows let in the midsummer sunlight, golden and bright, filtered just enough through the curtains that Viktor isn’t too worried about his skin. The cafe is mostly full of older women talking idly with each other. A pot of tea sits between them, and object itself is quite lovely. Decorated with swirling, beautiful curlicues of flowers and vines, the surface of it painted a fair, brilliant yellow. The teacups match.

“And you said  _ yes _ ?” Chris replies. 

“Yes,” Viktor answers. “Yuuri is going to let his lease run out and then...then he’s moving in. With  _ me _ . And it’s not as though I don’t have the room.”

Chris doesn’t quite frown, but there’s a puzzled shift across his features. “Wasting no time, I see,” he answers, taking a sip of tea.

“Yes,” Viktor answers. 

It’s been maybe a week since they all went bowling. It’s been literally a week, actually. A week of Yuuri bringing him tea at work and Viktor making dinner with him afterward. A week of Yuuri sheepishly going back to his apartment afterward ( _ Viktor, I won’t sleep if I spend the night tonight! _ ). Yuuri going on walks with him and Makka. Yuuri sending him a good morning message when he wakes up. 

It’s been a week with Yuuri and Viktor not only finds himself wanting more, he finds himself so excited by the prospect of more. They're not wasting time because there's no time Viktor can bear to waste.

“ _ Ax, витя,”  _ Chris sighs. “You romantic fool.”

“These things are different, on Vara. There is more time for a proper courting and to meet the family and-- you know this.There is more  _ time _ ,” Viktor says. 

Chris looks at him, seriously. “You don’t think you’re rushing this?” He asks. 

Viktor toys absently with the handle on his teacup. “Chris, I’ve been...waiting, my whole life. For someone to want to be with me and talk to me and eat with me and wake up with me in the morning. I've been waiting for...for half of me. I’ve been waiting for Yuuri.”

Chris looks at him, seriously. “Viktor,” he says. “Can I be honest with you?”

And Viktor finds himself considering what that sentence means. A thing people only say to him when they’re about to tell him something ugly, uncomfortable, or that will break his heart.  _Can I be honest with you? I only did this because my mother asked me to. Can I be honest with you? You really shouldn't sit with us anymore. Can I be honest with you? Your presence in the program is drawing unwanted attention. Maybe you should focus on...less public aspects of education._

People usually only want to be honest with him when it's bad news.

Viktor nods. 

“I’m not from Crina. My parents are, but I grew up here. I was born on the shuttle and all of my memories are from Earth,” he says. His gaze is fixed firmly on his teacup. “I don’t know what Varan customs are and my few attempts with Crinyan ones were a shitshow, frankly. I don’t know how to give you advice for courting Yuuri your way because I only really know and understand how it’s done here.”

He pauses. His hand drifts to the rim of the teacup, beginning to circle it carefully. 

“You’re more than Yuuri,” he says. “You’re not a half and you haven’t been... I hope you haven’t been waiting,  _ витя,  _ because you’re extraordinary and you deserve more than that. You're smart. You're kind. You're very good at your job. And you're also apparently the only one of my friends I can count on to not get too drunk at a social engagement.” 

Viktor looks at Chris for a long moment, and he considers this. 

“You are a good friend, I think,” Viktor says. “I have not had many, but I think you are a good one.”

Chris smiles. Takes a sip of his tea. “Thank you,” he says.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter is short because writing it was pulling teeth, tbh.  
> come bother me on tunglr


	23. Chapter 23

Yuuri leaves for work with a weekend bag slung over his shoulder with his briefcase. He skips the cafe-- he doesn’t have enough hands for this and tea. 

Phichit will probably never forgive him, but Viktor knows why Yuuri has the extra bag, and he  _ will _ forgive him, and honestly, Yuuri can live with stats like that.

Yuuri heads into the office and Viktor is already on the floor. Yuuri goes to a couple of meetings and works more on the text for the new catalogue and begins  _ tentative _ plans to acquire some netsuke for the museum to display. He works solidly, through the day and past lunch and into the cusp of the evening, until he feels Viktor’s cool hand on his shoulder. 

“Yuuri,” he says, softly. “Ready to come home?”   
Yuuri smiles at him and nods, feeling a little shakey. 

Not his first time at Viktor’s by far, but the first time he’s going to spend the night. 

Yuuri shuts down his computer and packs stuff in his briefcase. 

Viktor slings Yuuri’s bag over his shoulder and they slip out of the office, out of the museum, and quietly down the street. 

It’s quiet enough, taking the sidestreets through the residential neighborhoods and down further into the more posh part of the city. Celestino’s house, in the time it was his, became gradually part of one of the nicest parts of town and itself something of a landmark. The summer trees are blooming, crepe myrtles shaking confetti of blossoms onto them as they walk. 

“I love these,” Viktor says, his fingers brushing over their rain-heavy texture, dodging the branches. “I love how they feel under my hands.”

“Anything like them on Vara?” Yuuri asks.

Viktor shakes his hand. “No,” he says. “Not that I experienced but maybe on Crina or a moon there’s something. I didn’t have many trees or plants in Pieyetri. Too cold for many of them much of the time.”

Something in Yuuri aches to think how long Viktor has lived without flowers. 

Yuuri will give Viktor flowers every day he’s with him.

“What about Hasestsu?” Viktor asks. 

“Some,” Yuuri says. “Not these, but different trees. When you come home with me, you’ll see. Magnolias and other plants, but lots of conifers. And when winter comes, you’ll get to see our snows and fog and the  _ real  _ rainy season. And fall. I think you’ll like fall.”   
Vitkor smiles a little. Tucks a stray lock of hair back under his ear, his neck bowing gracefully, looking softly downward. 

“I’ve seen pictures,” he says. “But I’m excited. It never gets this warm on Vara, so I’ve been enjoying summer.”

“We should go to a beach,” Yuuri murmurs. “We could go swimming.”

“I’d like that,” Viktor says. “The water in the ports in Pieyetri was too cold and dirty for swimming.”

They drift toward each other on the walk to Viktor’s, hands drifting into each others’ orbits. 

Yuuri follows Viktor up his path and to his house. He opens his door with a twist of his key and Yuuri follows him inside. 

Makka shuffles to the door, rising on her legs to greet them while Yuuri tries to take his shoes off. He laughs, hanging up his case and Viktor scolds her half-heartedly in the looping, lilting tones of Varan. Viktor greets her and says, “I should walk her. She’s been inside all day and should stretch her legs.”

“Can I-- is it okay if I shower? While you do?” Yuuri asks. He feels a nervous fluttering in his stomach as he asks. 

Vitktor smiles. “Of course,” He answers. “My bedroom is right down the hall. It’s the one with the bed in it. You can’t miss it. The bathroom, it has all my shampoo and such in it. If you did not bring your own.”   
Viktor hands him his weekend bag. 

“Thank you,” Yuuri says, glancing up at him.

“I’ll be right back,” Viktor says, leashing Makkachin and stepping back out the door. 

And then it’s Yuuri, alone in Viktor’s house.

Yuuri drifts down the hall, past the post for the Innsbruck Olympics and past a few closed doors. He slips into Viktor’s bedroom, and there’s that  _ feeling _ in him when sees how clean and spare and  _ lonely _ it is. 

Nothing hangs on the walls. There are no pictures and no books. There’s a bed and a dresser. No clothes on floor or pens on the nightstand. Yuuri sets his bag on the made bed, and the grey comforter creases under its weight.

Yuuri pulls out his change of clothes and slips into the bathroom, which is similarly spare and clean. There’s a toothbrush and some bottles written in Varan. Yuuri turns on Viktor’s shower, the head far above him, and he take off his clothes and drapes them over the towel bar and steps under the spray.

Yuuri’s spending the night. Yuuri’s spending the night and he and Viktor--

They’ve kissed and they’ve slept with each other, but they haven’t  _ slept _ with each other yet. 

Yuuri’s nervous, and he’d rather do this in his apartment so he can be clean and ready, but his place is simply too small for all of Viktor, and his bed certainly is.

He’d usually hit the gym before Viktor came over, or go for a run, and then he’d shower and then he’d clean his apartment again. Maybe open up his work again while waiting for him. 

Yuuri’s glad he’s getting to shower now, though. To wash the city and his day off of his skin before  _ seeing _ Viktor. He’s not his best these days, but it’s not like he’s ever been much to look at. Having the chance to be really, really clean makes him feel quieter about that. 

Yuuri is thankful that the shampoo bottle is in English and that bar soap is relatively universal. 

He washes his hair and his face and he washes his body. He turns off the shower and steps out, pulling a grey towel around his hips. He looks at himself in the mirror, fogged with steam and his lack of glasses.

Yuuri takes a deep breath.

Closes his eyes and turns away from himself and steps back into the bedroom, to put on fresh clothes.

But Viktor is standing in the bedroom changing himself and he sees Yuuri and his blush-- purple-soft and oh-so lovely-- returns. 

“Hello,” he says. “I-- Makka is in her-- and--” Viktor swallows, visibly. His blue eyes wander from Yuuri’s hips to to his face, to his chest, to his hands, to his face.

Yuuri’s eyes stay fixed to all of Viktor. 

“Yuuri,” Viktor says, and his eyes close almost blissfully. He smiles. “My Yuuri, can I kiss you?” He asks this with his eyes still shut, still smiling, still beautiful.

Yuuri, almost wholly on instinct, steps forward, through the rest of the room.

And he stands before Viktor, eyes still closed and he reaches forward and up and he cups Viktor’s face gently.

Viktor’s eyes open. 

Yuuri does not love himself, he realizes, standing in front of Viktor. 

But Yuuri loves Viktor. And Viktor sees something Yuuri that is worth loving back.

And that’s not perfect, but it is a warm, comforting, full sort of feeling. 

Viktor bends a little. He reaches to brush the bottom of Yuuri’s lip with his thumb. 

Yuuri knows there is  time between Viktor’s thumb and Viktor’s lips, but Yuuri can never remember it. Viktor’s kiss, it overcomes him. It leaves his thoughts heavy and syrupy and comfortable. 

Viktor pushes Yuuri and Yuuri follows it, backing up to the bed and lying himself back, taking Viktor with him. Viktor perches, his arms bracketed around Yuuri and his lips still locked on Yuuri’s own. 

Yuuri’s toes curl as Viktor bites his bottom lip, pulling a bit. He gasps when Viktor lets his lip slip from between his teeth and moves to laying hot, breathy kisses over his jaw, toward his clavicle. 

“My Yuuri,” Viktor murmurs. He moves, pulling his torso upright and settling his knees to surround Yuuri’s thighs. He begins to unbutton his shirt, revealing his beautiful, toned shoulders and tight chest and stomach. Built like an athlete in his prime. 

Yuuri props himself up on his elbows and looks up at Viktor. There’s a small, cobalt bruise over his ribs. There’s a curving, purple scar on his right hip. There’s a few scattered freckles and a birthmark. A fine dust of silvery hair at the top of his waistband. 

Yuuri reaches to brush his thumb over the bruise, gently. “What happened?” He asks. 

“Ran into a sign,” he says. “It was  _ just _ chest height.”

Yuuri pulls himself from under Viktor, and Viktor obliges by rising to his feet briefly. Yuuri sits up, crosslegged, on the bed. 

“Your...your hip?” Yuuri asks, his hand resting on his own hip, in mirror to Viktor.

“Surgery,” he says. “When I was a baby. My leg was-- something was wrong. They fixed it.”

Yuuri looks at Viktor, in front of him, for a spare moment, before he reaches out and pulls him back onto him, guides his hands to cradle his chest, finds his lips on his neck, finds his breath in his ears. 

They kiss, tumbling in the sheets. The towel slips from Yuuri’s hips as he turns after a moment, straddling Viktor now, his hands curled in Viktor’s hair; his mouth drifting over Viktor’s clavicle to his chest. 

Viktor’s hands drift, unfocused. They find the small of his back, the wrap around his waist, they rest on his ass, they grasp, they stroke. His nails scratch and his fingertips press. His voice wanders in and out of his breath. 

“Yuuri, Yuuri-- my Yuuri,” Viktor says, “please, let me-- can I?” 

Yuuri looks up, and Viktor’s face is flushed lilac and dewy with sweat. His hair is falling from the braid. 

“Viktor?” Yuuri asks, and his voice is rough and breathy to his own ears.

Viktor smiles, all tenderness and excitement. 

Viktor shifts and Yuuri follows the motion, and they tumble such that Yuuri is under Viktor and Viktor is between his legs and--

Yuuri is half hard and flushed and embarrassed. The room is lit by the summer-evening sun and Yuuri feels his heart like thunder. He wants this, he wants this so badly, but he’s never--

The lights are on and Viktor is so beautiful and Yuuri wants this so badly but he feels anxiety crawl at the back of him like false fear, feels it worm its way between them. 

Viktor looks at Yuuri from across his torso, his blue eyes sparkling. 

“Yuuri,” he says, and he has a way of rolling his name in his mouth that Yuuri has never heard before. “Yuuri, with your permission, I would like to suck your cock.”

“Uhhh,” Yuuri says, feeling  _ brilliant _ . “Yeah. Yes please. Okay.”

Viktor smiles again. He kisses the interior of Yuuri’s thigh. He kisses and he nips, gently, at his body there. Viktor hums. Murmurs something into Yuuri’s skin. 

Yuuri, propped on his elbows. Viktor, kissing him and holding himself so close to Yuuri, to his skin, to his body. 

Viktor moves his arm from bracketed on the side of Yuuri’s hip to between his legs, wraps his hand around Yuuri’s cock. 

His fingers are cool; Yuuri’s cock is hot and hard. He strokes him a few times. Yuuri feels his breath stutter with the feeling. 

It’s been such a long time.

Viktor takes the head of Yuuri’s cock in his mouth. Hot and  _ wet _ . 

Yuuri doesn’t hear his voice, but he does  _ feel _ his voice, falling out of him without his permission. 

Viktor, carefully, takes Yuuri deeper into his mouth. 

Yuuri feels the flesh of Viktor’s shoulders slip under his fingertips, his nails beginning to bite into his skin. 

Viktor sucks.

“Viktor,” Yuuri cries. Beautiful Viktor, who in the light of the sun is sucking his cock. 

Yuuri does everything he can to prevent his hips from rolling forward, tries to keep himself from that driving, irresistible urge. Viktor reaches under Yuuri’s hips, elevates him somehow  _ deeper _ into him. 

In the stillness of the room, the sound of Viktor on him is obscene and beautiful. His long silver hair to nearly the small of his back, his muscular shoulders, his strong arms. 

“I’m-- Viktor-- I’m going to-- I’m--” He manages, before he comes; silence and ecstasy washing over him like a wave. 

Viktor swallows. Yuuri’s eyes lose focus. The static settles. 

The static shifts. 

Viktor wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. Rolls away from Yuuri to settle beside him on the bed. Yuuri feels that carbonated feeling in his chest again, buzzing and bumbling and echoing and strange. Yuuri turns and kisses Viktor, tasting the salty-strange taste of himself left in Viktor’s mouth. 

Yuuri lets his own hand drift down Viktor’s chest, to his hip, to his cock, nestled in silver pubic hair. 

His cock is dark lilac, nearly an aubergine color. 

Yuuri wraps his hand around Viktor’s cock and Viktor’s voice  _ shatters _ on the air. His face crumples, brows furrowed and eyes shut tight. He bites his lip, before opening his mouth again and to find vowels, to toss his head.

“Viktor,” Yuuri says. “So beautiful. I can’t-- you’re so beautiful.”

Lilting syllables of Varan slip from Viktor’s lips. 

Yuuri increases his pace. And Viktor’s breaking, beautiful voice  _ sings _ . 

“Viktor,” Yuuri says, in the wonder of him. 

And Viktor opens his clear blue eyes and looks at him and there’s only joy and love there. 

And Viktor comes with his voice let loose and his body goes still and heaving. 

Viktor’s dick goes soft. Viktor’s body curls inward, toward Yuuri. Yuuri faces him. 

Viktor smiles. 

Yuuri smiles back at him. 

Viktor reaches out for his hand and takes it. Places it over the right side of his chest. 

“My heart,” Viktor says. His accent is thicker. 

He moves his hand to the left side of his chest. 

“Yours,” Viktor says, his eyes lazy and soft. 

And there’s a heartbeat on the left side, too. A heartbeat that Yuuri can feel pulsing out of his own fingertips and into the space in Viktor, an echoing.

Viktor’s heartbeat. Yuuri’s.

“ _ Naparnik _ ,” Viktor says. “My love. My heart.”

Yuuri feels that carbonated feeling in his own chest. A feeling that he knows is Viktor’s heart beating in him. 

Yuuri pulls Viktor to his own chest. 

Viktor spreads his long fingers, to feel that feeling. 

“My Yuuri,” Viktor says, love and wonder on his voice. 

The feeling overwhelms him. 

“You love me,” Yuuri says. 

Viktor looks at him with certainty, as if it’s unbelievable that he could feel any other way about Yuuri. 

“I thought maybe, it would not happen,” Viktor says, softly. “You always would be, but I thought maybe I would not feel you, this way. I didn’t think  _ you _ would feel me this way. I would have told you. I am sorry.”

“Viktor,” Yuuri murmurs. Overcome by everything.

“My Yuuri,” Viktor says. 

The shadows lengthening, they lay and look at each other, feeling the beat of each others’ hearts. 


	24. Chapter 24

Viktor feels Yuuri’s heartbeat in his chest like a song, played too loudly in the cavity of his chest, almost painfully off tempo from his own heartbeat. He wonders if it can be seen, beating fervently against his ribs, his muscles. Viktor’s own heart is slow and steady, and Yuuri’s feels too-quick; too-fast. The feeling is crowded and overclose; overwhelming. It’s all too much. 

The feeling is the opposite of loneliness and it rushes over Viktor; cracks him open and leaves him raw and fresh and new.  

He asked his father. “It feels  _ warm _ , Vitya,” he’d said, his measured voice steady and quiet. His father was always like that. Considered and quiet. “It feels like never being cold again.”

His father abhorred the cold. Small Crina, orbiting old Vara, is always longer wintered and less sunlit. Love was not home; it was warmth. Viktor remembers his mother’s arms around his father. He remembers the softness in his smile. He remembers his dense, thick socks and sweaters, his soup. His warm, sweet voice singing softly but filling every room of the house. Viktor’s father knew love like warmth, and he knew the heartbeat of his love steady and in synch in his own chest until the day he died. 

The feeling of Yuuri’s heartbeat, in his chest, is almost more than Viktor can bear. It isn’t warmth;  it’s cacophony. Music ringing in every part of his body and heat burning in every digit and limb.  He never thought it would happen. He never thought--

Viktor thought it would just be him, forever.

He lays in his bed and looks at Yuuri. His love, whose eyes have drifted closed and whose dark hair is mussed and curled. Yuuri. Soft and dozing in the aftermath of sex. 

Viktor loves Yuuri, and Yuuri loves him too. Viktor knows this, with all of his body. 

“My Yuuri,” Viktor says. “Are you hungry?”   
Yuuri stirs a little. His eyes are heavy as they open. So beautiful; soft-toned sepias well within place in a Rembrandt, Viktor thinks.

“Mmm,” Yuuri replies. “Yes? I should eat something, I guess. We should. We could cook something.”

“Or we could order in,” Viktor says. “And we could stay in bed.”   
Yuuri cracks a wry smile. “That seems excessive,” he says. 

“I disagree,” Viktor replies. “I could just throw on my robe to answer the door. I see no reason, really, why either of us should get dressed for the remainder of the weekend.”

“Makkachin,” Yuuri says. “We have to walk her.”

“There is an expression? In English. That bridge, we will burn it when we get to it,” he says. 

Yuuri laughs. 

“Okay,” he says. “Okay. We can order something.”

Viktor smiles at him. Overwhelmed again by that feeling.

“You want to live with me,” Viktor says. “And you love me.” Consumed by the wonder of it all.

Yuuri nods. 

“I love you,” Yuuri says, his lovely voice so soft. 

“I love you,” Viktor answers. 

Yuuri reaches across the bed and brushes his long hair out of his eyes. Sweeps his thumb over Viktor’s cheekbones. Pinkness dusts over his cheeks as he does it. He bites his lip and glances away. 

Shy Yuuri. Viktor’s heart is beating in Yuuri’s chest and Yuuri is still nervous to touch him. 

Viktor loves him, so much. 

Viktor’s hand is resting on Yuuri’s hip, drifting slowly up and down his side. Yuuri is less thin under his fingers that Viktor himself is-- his skin is soft, but in a different way, plush under his fingertips. There is a softer  _ press _ before finding his firm muscle, and Viktor loves it. He loves the softness in Yuuri, in his body and his smile and his eyes and his voice. Viktor loves the softness under his fingertips as he presses against Yuuri’s chest, chasing the sensation of his fast heartbeat behind Yuuri’s own ribs.

Yuuri flushes. “Sorry,” he says, taking Viktor’s hand from his chest by wrapping his own fingers into it.

Viktor looks at Yuuri, at how Yuuri looks away, and he feels the weight of Yuuri’s apology like a stone.

“Why?” Viktor asks. He feels almost like a child, that he has to ask instead of just _knowing_.

Yuuri does something with his face that isn’t a smile. Maybe it’s supposed to be a smile, but there’s something pained and ugly there instead of joyful. Yuuri doesn’t meet his eyes, though. He doesn’t let go, either. Just grips his hand tighter for a moment, before saying, “I got...fat. I know it’s... _ I’m _ ...gross and it’s not-- I have trouble with discipline.” Yuuri speaks in a stop-and-start way; rhythmless and jolting. 

“I have trouble being good,” he says. “And it only got worse when I retired. I’m... sorry.”

Viktor sees, suddenly, why Yuuri left the ice. 

The ice stopped being a friend and became a way for his darling, beautiful, talented, kind, clever,  _ soft _ Yuuri to hurt himself.

“I love you,” Viktor says, and his voice feels thick. “I love you how you are. I love you how you are and how you  _ were _ and how you will be. I love you, Yuuri. I love your body in my bed and your heart in my chest. I love you, Yuuri. I love you every way you are. You can’t be sorry. There’s nothing to be sorry for.”

Yuuri’s hand is so tight in his. Yuuri does not look at him. There’s an awful, rigid tension in the stillness in his shoulders, his arm, his face. 

Viktor loves him so much. 

“I wish,” Yuuri says, before his voice trails off. He licks his bottom lip. “I love you,” he says, instead of finishing the first thought. 

“I love you,” Viktor answers. 

They lay, lazy in bed as the sun gradually goes down and cool dusk begins to settle, dark, in the room. The tension between them remains. 

Viktor knows that there does not lie between them the beginnings of the right things to say to Yuuri. The feeling is guilty and nervous. 

Makkachin approaches the door and scratches at it a little, her claws scraping against the wood. 

“That bridge you mentioned burning,” Yuuri says, his voice soft, “I think we’ve arrived at it.”

Viktor sighs, dramatically, before rising from the bed. He stops over into the bathroom and wipes himself off with a washcloth before grabbing a fresh pair of underwear from his hamper. He heads back to the door and opens it.

Makkachin, instead of heading to the front of the house, saunters into the room and jumps up into the bed with Yuuri. 

Yuuri laughs, gently, and says something in Japanese that Viktor can’t follow. 

“Let me get my computer,” Viktor says. “We’ll order something.”

Yuuri keeps laughing in bed, Makkachin nosing ticklishly at his ribs and arms. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> come bother me


	25. Chapter 25

Yuuri loves how Viktor’s hair feels as he runs his hands through it. His hair is so long-- Yuuri has grown his out a little before but he’s never had it as long as Viktor, which flows nearly to his hips. 

Viktor sits on the floor and Yuuri sits behind him, on the couch. Viktor is still so tall and long, though, and he lets his spine curve forward so that Yuuri can comfortably work. 

Yuuri sections his hair and pulls it gently forward into the beginning of the braid, pulling the hair away from Viktor’s face. 

Viktor hums, happily. 

“Where did you learn?” He asks.

“My ballet instructor,” Yuuri answers. “Minako-- before I started skating. She taught me how, and then when Yuuko had her daughters I would help sometimes.”

“Who is Yuuko?” Viktor asks. 

It’s dusk. They spent all night in bed together and the better part of the day, too, and now the sun is setting on Saturday and Yuuri knows he should probably go back to his apartment and get ready for Monday, but he doesn’t want to leave. He knows Viktor doesn’t want him to go, either.

Viktor’s house feels like a safe port in a storm, almost. Yuuri feels a calm in his bones here that he hasn’t felt in years. Despite the fluttering sensation in his chest, Yuuri feels an  _ easiness _ , one he is reluctant to let go of. 

“A friend of mine,” he says. “Her family owned the skating rink I grew up going to. She got married right after high school and had triplets. We were really close, growing up.”   
Viktor’s hair is silky and slippery, and recently brushed like this, it threatens to slip from Yuuri’s fingers. He keeps braiding, though. 

“Wow,” Viktor says. “Three children, all at once. That sounds...difficult.”

Yuuri nods. Laughs, barely, under his breath. “They’re good girls. I guess they must be...they must be nearly seven by now,” he says. “I haven’t seen them in years.”

“They are only six?” Viktor asks. “How long mut their hair be?”

“Oh,” Yuuri says. He bites his lip. “When Yuuko had them...she had some trouble. So I stayed with them for a few months and helped. And she always liked it when I braided her hair in the mornings.”

Viktor doesn’t say anything for a long moment. It’s like that between them sometimes, but it’s never uncomfortable. Quiet but easy, like coming home.

“What is child-- to make a baby? The baby, it grows and then  _ becomes _ ? What is this called?” Viktor asks. 

“Pregnancy?” Yuuri responds.

“Yes,” Viktor answers. “Thank you. Pregnancy, on Earth, what is this like?”

“Oh,” Yuuri says. “It takes nine months. Almost a whole year. And sometimes it’s easy and sometimes it’s hard. It depends.”   
“Do many people have three babies at one time?” Viktor asks.

“No,” Yuuri answers. “It’s not common at all. Most people just have one at a time.”

Viktor nods, slightly. “On Vara, this is  _ unheard _ of,” he says. “Very, very, very uncommon. To birth one child, already this is so difficult.”

“Really?” Yuuri asks.

“Mmm,” Viktor hums. “Yes. I was carried for nearly two years, how time is measured here, and that it was difficult the whole time. I was their only child.”

Yuuri lets go of Viktor’s braid and pulls him forward, into his arms, where Yuuri can hold him and protect him and let him never be lonely again. Never  _ alone _ again. 

“Yuuri,” Viktor says, his voice warm and cheerful. “Yuuri, my love, all is well. I promise.”

Yuuri holds him a little tighter.

“My father, he worked with art, did you know?” Viktor asks. “He worked with an institution like ours, but on Vara. Art from Earth, usually quite good reproductions but some originals on loan.”

“I did know that,” Yuuri says. “You told me.”

“I wish you could have met him,” he says. “He was brilliant. He would have loved to speak with you about your exhibits. And your family-- they? They run an inn?”   
Yuuri nods. “A hundred years or so after you were born,” Yuuri says. “We were given the inn, over the spring. My father’s family gave it to him when he married my mother. And my sister will probably inherit it.”

“Your parents,” Viktor asks. “They are still…?”

The question hangs a moment.  _ Alive? _

“Yes,” Yuuri answers. “You will meet them.”

Viktor goes still for just a moment.

His hands grip Yuuri’s forearms, tightly. 

“Do you think...do you think they will like me?” Viktor asks, and his voice sounds terribly small and  _ worried _ .

“Yes,” Yuuri answers. “I like you.” And he knows that for Viktor, that will be reason enough for his mother and his father and for Mari. Although, Yuuri has trouble believing that  _ anyone _ could dislike Viktor. 

“Yuuri?” Viktor asks.

“Yes?” Yuuri answers.

“Please don’t go tonight,” he says.

“I won’t,” Yuuri answers. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry this one is SO short.   
> more soon


	26. Chapter 26

Yuuri’s hand levitates over them for a moment.

The last time Yuuri went skating was nearly a year ago, now. He was out of town, for a conference, by himself. Phichit was far away and there was a rink right next to the hotel. A public rink, one that rents skates for blocks of time and would let him on. So he skipped the last day of the conference and paid in cash and wore nondescript clothes. The skates bit at his feet-- both his blisters lost and the rental skates unfriendly. 

And Yuuri carved large figure eights into the ice for hours. 

Yuuri’s hand hovers over his skates. 

Yuuri takes a deep breath, and he closes his closet door. Grabs his  gym bag instead and heads out to swim. 

Or, he tries to.

He wants to. 

But he stands in front of his door for a moment and he feels the weariness of it all settle over him like a lead vest. 

He checks his phone.

_ Good morning, my Yuuri,  _ a text from Viktor reads.

Yuuri takes a deep breath. 

It’s four thirty. Earlier than usual, but he’s been meeting Viktor for coffee at the shop. Viktor wakes up this early every morning, all on his own. Different sleep metabolism. 

Yuuri doesn’t know when the rink here opens and he doesn’t know when Phichit would be there and he doesn’t want--

He doesn’t want anyone to look at him. 

Yuuri looks at his phone. 

Today is going to be a bad day. 

Yuuri takes a deep breath. 

_ MIght be late _ , he texts Viktor.  _ Might take a personal day. _

_ Are you okay? _ Viktor messages back, almost instantly. 

Yuuri laughs at that, helplessly.

Shrugs his bag off and collapses onto his couch. 

Yuuri stays at Viktor’s on weekends and his place during the week. He leaves more and more of himself there every time. 

He grits his teeth. 

_ Need a day _ , Yuuri sends. 

Yuuri takes a deep breath. Calls Yakov’s office phone and pulls his shoes back off. 

After a long moment, Yuuri takes another long, deep breath. And he takes another. And one more. 

Yuuri keeps breathing, or at least, he keeps trying to. 

Yuuri keeps breathing, and at seven, Phichit sends him a text. 

_ Take care of urself today, _ it reads.  _ Ill hold down the fort.  _

_ Thanks Phi _ , Yuuri sends back. 

At nine, Mari sends him a text.

_ Phichit told me today is a bad day _ , it reads.  _ Anything we can do? _

_ You are five thousand miles away,  _ Yuuri answers. 

_ So fucking what, _ Mari sends back. 

Yuuri sighs. 

“Hey, Mari,” Yuuri greets as soon at the phone rings.

“What happened?” She asks, her voice clear and demanding. To the point, as Mari always is.

“Nothing  _ happened _ ,” Yuuri says. Sometimes, it’ll be something that sets him off. But sometimes, it just  _ is _ . “Couldn’t-- couldn’t make it out the door to make it to the gym and it just-- got worse.”

“Is anyone taking care of you?” Mari asks. 

“Phichit has been texting me,” Yuuri answers. 

“Have you eaten?” Mari asks. 

“No,” Yuuri answers. 

“Eat something you idiot,” Mari says. “Eat something and take a shower.”

“Yes, Mari,” Yuuri answers. 

“And keep in touch,” she says. “I might be the only one that calls but Ma and Pa worry about you.”

Yuuri gets up from the couch and heads to the kitchen. 

“I’m putting on some rice,” he says. “I’ve...I think I have some natto in the back of the fridge.”

“Throw an egg in there,” She says. “Protein.”

“Yes, Mari,” Yuuri answers. 

“How is the museum?” Mari asks.

Yuuri gnaws on his bottom lip. “I-- I met someone,” he says. “At work. Uh-- Viktor.”

“Viktor?” Mari says. Yuuri can practically hear her raise her eyebrows. 

“He’s a docent,” Yuuri says. “He’s...he’s really...he’s good to me.”

“If he’s not--”   
“I know,” Yuuri says. “But he’s really...he’s good to me and-- and Mari, I love him.”

“Are we gonna meet him?” She asks.

“Yes,” Yuuri answers. 

There’s a pause.

“Wow,” Mari answers. “Serious.”

Yuuri shuts his rice cooker. “Yeah,” he says. “Really...really serious.”

There’s the sound of Mari pulling on a cigarette. She smokes like a chimney. “If he loves you, he loves you,” she says. “And that means he loves you no matter what you look like. You know that, right?”

Yuuri takes a deep breath. 

“You can’t punish yourself,” Mari says. “Okay, Yuuri?”   
“Okay, Mari,” Yuuri answers. 

They’ve talked about this before. 

“I have rice in the cooker,” Yuuri says. “I’m going to take a shower.”   
“Okay,” Mari says. “Be in touch.”

“I will be,” Yuuri says. 

He hangs up and puts his phone down on the countertop. 

He looks at the rice cooker and he heads to the bathroom. 

He draws the shower and climbs inside, and he lets the water fall, going as hot as it can. 

Yuuri lets his eyes close. 

The water goes cold.

He steps out. Puts on a shirt and some sweats and puts some rice in the bowl. Adds some natto and stirs it in. 

Yuuri eats mechanically, manages about half a bowl before he puts it back down and sits back down on the couch. 

Yuuri sits down on the couch, and he drifts. 

TIme passes around him. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> mari is like...she's my favorite tbh. as a blunt older sister, blunt older sisters hold a special place in my gay little heart


	27. Chapter 27

Viktor comes into the office at seven and writes down a sheaf of notes for Yurio. Yurio arrives at nine, and by this point Viktor has all the information prepared for him that he could need. 

“I can’t lead tours today,” Viktor tells him when he comes in, his shaggy blonde hair tucked up in a messy half-ponytail. “I have notes prepared for you, though, and I know you’ve lead tours on your own-- I’ve watched you and you’re quite good. I can’t supervise either but that’s--”   
“Old man,” Yurio says, fixing him with his green-blue eyes. “Calm the fuck down.”

Viktor looks at him and says, “I can’t stay today.”

“Okay,” Yurio says. “Are you feeling well? Beka helped me find a good doctor and--”   
“I need to go help Yuuri,” Viktor says. Viktor  _ blurts _ . He says it and then it occurs to him that this might be  _ private _ . 

Yurio rolls his eyes. Theatrical. “That fat idiot?” He asks. “Why?”

“Because if I don’t, I don’t know who will,” Viktor says. “And I love him.”

“You don’t  _ love _ him,” Yurio says, his voice heavy and hard. “Don’t be a  _ fool _ .”

Viktor looks at Yurio. 

Abrasive Yurio, still a child and so far from home. 

Viktor can’t really imagine his loneliness.

Well, he can, but he can’t imagine that loneliness at that age so far away from his homeworld and from his family. And he’s started to get to know him and learn how to  _ hear _ him around that abrasiveness; his distance.

_ You’re setting yourself up for heartbreak _ , is what he’s saying.  _ He’ll die and you’ll regret it. Protect yourself. _

Viktor smiles at Yurio. “I do,” he says. “I really do love him. I am that fool.”

And he is, is the thing. This far away, across town from him, Viktor can still feel his heartbeat, but he also feels a terrible  _ pain _ . Something awful settled in between the beats, something dull and heavy. He’s having trouble breathing from the feeling. 

_ He won’t die; we’ll die. _

Yurio’s eyes flick from Viktor’s eyes to his chest, and back again.

Viktor nods. 

“You fucking idiot,” Yurio says, taking the file and storming out of the office and down the stairs.

Viktor watches him go and then he grabs his bag and dashes out the door. Grabs the first train across town and looks at his phone the whole time, waiting for a message from Yuuri. Anything.

Viktor walks up Yuuri stairs two at a time and knocks on his door several times.

There’s a long, aching sort of pause, and the door opens slowly, and Yuuri stands there.

He looks awful.

It’s not that his hair is a mess or that his skin is greasy or that his clothes are worn and overbig-- Viktor has seen Yuuri this way many times and he loves him ever stronger and closer every time he does. It’s that Yuuri looks like he’s part of the living dead. His skin is sallow and pale. His eyes look unbearably heavy and sad. 

That heavy feeling echoes in Viktor’s chest like a rock. 

There’s something that shakes between Yuuri’s eyebrows; something vulnerable that quivers in his eyes. 

“Yuuri,” Viktor breathes. 

“I--can’t--” Yuuri says, his own voice interrupting him. 

Viktor stands in his doorway and lets time slip between them. Let’s Yuuri find the thing lost inside himself.

Maybe a month they’ve been dating. It’s nearly September now, late summer shifting the long and languorous days a little shorter, a little cooler. And in that time, Viktor’s learned that the thing to do is to wait for Yuuri to find his meaning, to route it through his brain. 

“Couldn’t-- I thought maybe--  _ maybe _ I could-- I could try the rink,” Yuuri says, finally. “I-- I thought.”

Yuuri closes his eyes tight. 

“I might need to-- to be alone,” he says, his eyes still closed, his voice small. 

Viktor feels like he’s drowning.

He doesn’t say that. Instead, he says, “Of course.”

“I’m not...fun like this,” Yuuri says. 

“I love you,” Viktor says. “I love you when you’re not fun, too.”

Yuuri takes a deep breath. 

“I’m not-- I’m sorry,” he says. 

Viktor nods. 

Yuuri looks at him. Viktor is stopped a little, to be seen comfortably through Yuuri’s short doorway. Yuuri looks up at him, his eyes  _ heavy _ . Unbearably heavy. Viktor wishes he could lift that heaviness from Yuuri. Hold it for him to afford some kind of  _ relief _ . 

But instead, Yuuri closes his apartment door. 

Viktor stands in front of it for a long, chilly minute, before he turns around and takes the train home. 

Climbs into bed with Makka and stares and stares and stares at his phone. 


	28. Chapter 28

_ Is he okay? _

Viktor stares at the message. Can’t pull away from here, from looking at it. He lays in bed and looks at the message Phichit send him. He lays there for four hours before typing, carefully,  _ He sent me away. _

Viktor feels heaviness in his chest like a weight pulling him under. He feels it like drowning, crowding his throat and lungs and limbs. He’s gotten up to let Makkachin out but he can’t imagine summoning the strength to ride the train to the office. He can’t imagine dressing himself or combing his hair. He can’t imagine eating or speaking.

It hurts. 

_ Oh, fuck _ , Phichit sends back.  _ Cool. not cool, i mean. okay-- so i’ll talk to him.  _

Viktor stares at it. 

_ He did this in college,  _ Phichit sends back. 

_ Fuck _ , Phichit sends again.  _ Yuuri _ . 

Another beat.  _ Thanks, viktor.  _

Viktor stares at his phone. 

Feels the  _ heaviness  _ of it all.

Makkachin noses against his shoulder, her nose cold and wet and familiar. Viktor sighs. She licks against him and Viktor feels a tenuous laugh. He turns over in bed and wraps his arms around her. 

Falls back asleep.

* * *

 

Phichit was already halfway to Yuuri’s when Viktor sent him the message. Honestly, the silence did a lot to answer it, too. 

Phichit hasn’t heard from Yuuri since he tried to go to the rink, which is a bad sign for stuff like this. Stuff like this is either an immediate  _ It’s fine! I freaked out but it’s fine!  _ Call afterwards or it’s  _ not _ fine.

Phichit remembers February of Junior year, when he didn’t see him for a week and didn’t hear from him for three days. Phichit remembers using his screwdriver to pull Yuuri’s door down, and he remembers the mess he found of Yuuri curled up in his bed, too overwhelmed by  _ everything _ to move, to get up, to leave. 

Phichit loves Yuuri so much. 

_ He’s not your ex, is he? _ Chris asked him once. 

Somehow, Yuuri is further from home than most people. Further even than Otabek, who is from Mars. Somehow, despite being surrounded by friends, Yuuri is very lonesome. Somehow, despite the lightness and quickness in his body and his laughter and his writing and his passion, Yuuri holds something heavy in himself, and sometimes it tries to smother him. 

Yuuri’s not his ex. 

Phichit thinks that if he was his ex, he wouldn’t care about him this much, but Phichit has trouble imaging not caring for Yuuri as much as he does. 

Yuuri has that kind of effect on people. 

Phichit heads up the stairs and stops in front of Yuuri’s door. 

He raises his hand to knock, and he pauses.

_ I’m at ur place,  _ he sends Yuuri. 

He waits ten minutes. Reads something online, checks some email, takes a few selfies.

After ten minutes, he knocks.

After five minutes, he pulls a key from his wallet and opens the door. 

Yuuri’s apartment is tiny but flush with prints. There’s postcard prints from museums and lino prints their friends made; there’s photographs and calligraphy exercises. They blanket the walls of the small space to remove shoes and the living room and the kitchen. 

There are no dishes in the sink. 

Phichit gnaws on his bottom lip. Hasn’t been eating. Three days since Phichit heard from Yuuri and no dishes in the sink means he’s been locked to his bed in that time. 

Phichit steps through the apartment to the small, closed, bedroom door. 

His hand hesitates over it for a moment, before he knocks. 

“Yuuri?” He calls. “Yuuri?”   
There’s a long silence, and then a low groan. 

“It’s me,” Phichit says. “Can I come in?”   
There’s another low groan. 

Phichit opens the door. 

Yuuri is laying in bed, his hair visible under a blanket. He almost completely buried under the blankets, despite the warm, still air in the bedroom. 

Phichit steps in. Lays his hand on what he thinks is Yuuri’s shoulder. 

“Yuuri,” he says. “When was the last time you ate?”

The shape of Yuuri rises and falls. 

“Couple days ago,” he says eventually, his voice barely audible. 

“Okay,” Phichit says. “Gonna get some yogurt. When was the last shower? Same time?”   
There’s a rustling under the sheets that Phichit is taking for a nod. 

“Let me get you into a shower while I get some groceries,” he says. 

Yuuri doesn’t move for a long time, but he eventually pulls the blankets back.

Phichit is never prepared for how Yuuri looks haunted. The way his eyes go hollow, the way his skin loses its light. Phichit isn’t prepared for how heavy Yuuri’s shoulders go. It breaks his heart every time. 

Phichit and Yuuri get up, and Yuuri wobbles to the bathroom and Phichit waits until he hears the starting of the shower. 

He races downstairs and across the street to the convenience store. Grabs yogurt and hummus and pita chips and a banana and a thing of blue gatorade. 

Races back upstairs and Yuuri is still in the shower. 

Phichit strips and remakes his bed. He opens the windows to let moving air in. 

Yuuri’s phone lays uncharged, dead, on the nightstand. 

Phichit looks at it before deciding that maybe that’s a  _ later _ discussion and not a  _ now _ one. 

It is two hours later when Yuuri emerges from the shower, and another ten minutes before he emerges from his room, fingers pruney and his hair sticking wetly to his forehead. 

Yuuri sits down on the couch heavily. He closes his eyes.

After a long time, he says, “I wanted to skate again, but the  _ feeling _ came back.” He swallows, dryly. “The static.”

Phichit nods.

“And it just got worse and worse and suddenly I couldn’t breathe and then I couldn’t-- I couldn’t--” he continues. 

He doesn’t finish. 

Phichit doesn’t need him to. 

Phichit hands him the yogurt and a spoon. 

“Eat,” he says. 

Yuuri opens the container and takes a few bites, mechanically. After a moment, he begins to rub hard circles over his chest. He’s started doing that recently. Phichit wishes he knew why. 

Yuuri eventually puts the cup down. Phichit knows it’s still more than half full. 

“We were scared,” he says. “Not just me. I thought you were seeing a therapist.”   
Yuuri doesn’t answer for a long moment. 

“Viktor tried to come over and it made it….worse,” Yuuri says. “It got-- worse. And I sent him away.”

Yuuri’s eyes slowly go wide. “I sent him  _ away _ ,” he says, and glassiness comes over his expression, eyes going shiny before fat tears begin to spill over the corners. Yuuri’s rubbing hand turns into an inward facing claw, pressing against his t-shirt, his chest. 

His breath speeds. 

“Yuuri,” Phichit says, laying a hand firmly on his shoulder, pulling his attention to him. “Yuuri, breathe. Breathe with me.” 

Yuuri watches him and he inhales, long and steady. They follow each other, Yuuri gradually calming down. 

“I sent him away,” Yuuri says, eventually. “I hate when I’m like this and I didn’t-- if-- once he sees, he’ll  _ know _ . He’ll  _ know _ .”

“Is that why your phone is off?” Phichit asks.

“It died,” Yuuri says. “I let it.”

“Cool,” Phichit says. “Can you eat more?”   
“No,” Yuuri answers. 

After a moment, he says, “I’m so sorry. It just-- it all happened, so suddenly and I couldn’t. I just couldn’t...grasp it.”   
“It scares us,” Phichit says. “It scared me and Viktor and Chris.”

“I know,” Yuuri says. “I’m sorry.”

His voice is colorless. 

“I’m gonna plug your phone in,” Phichit says.

“Okay,” Yuuri answers. 

“I got gatorade,” Phichit says. 

“Okay,” Yuuri answers. 

He grabs the bottle as Phichit stands and heads back to Yuuri’s room to plug his phone in. 

Yuuri’s had a few sips by the time Phichit is back in. 

“Yuuri,” Phichit says, “you know that if Viktor loves you, he’ll still love you through this?” 

Yuuri doesn’t respond. 

“He will,” Phichit reiterates. “If you let him, he will. I meant what I said, about this scaring him.”   
“I sent him away,” Yuuri says, again. 

Phichit knows that this doesn’t mean  _ I didn’t want him _ , it means something like,  _ I wanted to protect him _ and  _ he would never come back. _

“You have to tell him what happened,” Phichit says. “And you have to get on the same page.”

“I didn’t sleep,” Yuuri says, after a moment. 

Phichit nods. “Finish the gatorade first,” he says. 

Yuuri nods. Phichit takes a Buzzfeed quiz while Yuuri finishes. Yuuri pees and goes back to bed.

Phichit counts his lucky stars that Yuuri has Netflix and that he thought to bring his emergency pajamas when he left for the office this morning. 

Phichit settles in for the night on Yuuri’s couch, and he sends Viktor the text message,  _ with him. He’s alive and mostly sort of okay, -ish. _

_ Thank you _ , Viktor answers after a little while. 


	29. Chapter 29

It feels like very, very slowly, coming up for air. 

There’s a feeling of pressure decreasing, very slowly, very gradually. Yuuri lays in bed and takes a deep breath, lets it wind all the way through his senses, through his body, through his thoughts. Yuuri feels the distant pressure of his fingertips. He feels the sensation of his mattress against his spine. He feels his breath in his lungs and his heart in his chest and his eyelids over his eyes. He feels the air on his skin. 

Yuuri feels these things as a catalogue; a litany. 

And Yuuri finally begins to come out of his body and back to the world. 

He sits up. He doesn’t surface, but he can see the light through the top of the water.

Climbs out of bed and steps into the living room.

Phichit is asleep on his couch. 

Yuuri looks at him in the streetlight leaking into his apartment. 

He feels a stab of guilt. 

Shouldn’t wake him up. 

Yuuri walks to his bathroom and shuts the door. Turns on the faucet and lets the water run. 

Yuuri sits on the toilet, forearms rested on his knees. 

Breathes deeply. 

He thinks about taking another shower. 

He washes his face instead and goes back to his bedroom. He sits at the edge of his bed and glances over at his phone. 

He takes another deep breath. 

There’s a missed call from Mari and a few missed calls from Phichit. A few texts from Phichit. 

There’s nothing from Viktor. 

Yuuri feels guilt like a bolt of lightning. 

There’s a pounding on his door. 

Yuuri startles. 

He pulls on a pair of sweats as the pounding continues. Phichit has risen on the couch, squinting into the room. 

Yuuri opens his door. 

“It’s Yurio,” he says.

Yurio stands in Yuuri’s doorway looking  _ furious _ . His hair is in a messy ponytail and his eyes are angry and bright. His hands are clenched into tight fists. 

“What did you  _ do  _ to him?” Yurio demand, surging into Yuuri’s personal space, his anger a sudden and bright candle. 

Yuuri feels his voice bubble up and  _ stop _ .

“He won’t answer. He won’t get out of bed. He won’t do  _ anything _ . What did you  _ do _ ? I know that you did it-- I know both of you  _ did  _ it. What did you do?” He demands, his voice is loud and hard. 

“Whoah, whoah, whoah,” Phichit says, suddenly appearing at Yuuri’s shoulder and pulling him away from Yurio. “What the fuck? What the fuck is your damage?”   
Yurio says something in quick, sharp Varan, before he says, “Vitya is  _ broken. _ You think you can do these things, with no consequences? You’re his  _ naparnik _ . Go  _ fix _ him you fat idiot-- did you think--”

“Hey!” Phichit shouts, interrupting Yurio. “What the fuck! Quit yelling in the  _ hallway _ at four in the damn morning and  _ stop chewing Yuuri out when we don’t know what’s going on. _ ”

Yurio stops yelling, stands chastised but luminescent with anger before them. 

Phichit turns to Yuuri. “Do you want him inside?”

Yuuri  _ fervently  _ does not. 

“Okay,” Yuuri says. 

Phichit turns to Yurio. “Fucking,  _ inside voice,  _ buckaroo,” he says, firmly, and he pulls Yurio in and shuts the door. 

“ _ What _ ,” Phichit asks, “the  _ hell _ is going on?”

“Vitya won’t answer his phone or get out of bed or come to the door,” Yurio says. “Viktor. And this  _ grebanyy debil _ won’t fucking--” Yurio sighs. He looks at Yuuri and hisses, lowly, “You have his  _ heart _ in you chest; did you think he would not  _ feel _ this?”

Phichit frowns, shakes his head. “What the  _ fuck _ are you talking about?”   
Yuuri takes Phichit’s hand and puts it on the right side of his chest, so he can feel the steady thunder of Viktor’s heart. 

Phichit looks at him, wheels turning but not understanding. 

“We’re-- he’s my-- he’s my soulmate,” Yuuri says. “Something happened. Viktor says it happens.”

“What happens?” Phichit asks. “What the fuck?”

“All people,” Yurio says, “they were one, once, but then they were split, into two. Half of your heart, your-- ah? Your  _ dusha _ ? Half of it is in someone else. And when you  _ find _ them, it is complete again.” Yurio gestures to Phichit’s hand. “Vitya and this idiot finish each other. And Vitya can feel the-- he can feel it. He has responsibilities, to Vitya.  _ Go fix this. _ ”

Phichit looks at Yuuri. He looks exhausted and confused. 

Yuuri feels the guilt like an impossible ache; feels it like an ocean of water over his head. 

“I’m sorry,” Yuuri says. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

Yurio looks at him like he’s vermin. “Don’t be sorry; go  _ fix  _ it,” he says. 

Phichit shakes his head. “No,” he says. “Yuuri’s going to eat something and get dressed and you’re going to apologize for bursting into his place before the crack of fucking dawn and then you and I are going to get coffee and have a short chat about  _ speaking respectfully to others, you irritating fifteen year old edgelord. _ ”

Yurio looks like he’s going to burst into flames.

Yuuri nods. “I’m-- can I just-- I’m going to shower, okay?”  He says.

“Yeah,” Phichit says. “‘I’m gonna make some coffee, I guess. You’re going to sit the fuck down and not say anything.”

Yuuri stands there for a moment. Phichit and Yurio peel off to the living room and Yuuri stands there and he says, “Viktor can feel it?”

“Of course he can,” Yurio says. “You finish each other. This is the point.”

Yuuri takes a deep breath. 

“He’s drowning,” he says. 

He steps into his shoes and goes outside to hail a cab. 

Viktor’s drowning, and it’s all his fault. 


	30. Chapter 30

There’s a sound at the door; it’s continuous. 

It happens and it keeps happening. Persistent. Loud. Ringing doorbell and pounding. His phone starts buzzing, too, but that’s probably just Yuri. He’s been calling, incessantly. 

It keeps coming. Viktor sighs.

He rolls over, off of his bed and pulls on a shirt. 

Shirt and boxers. That’s enough. That’s good enough. 

He slouches to the front of the house and Yuuri is there.

Yuuri looks  _ exhausted _ . 

Viktor looks at him, and Yuuri looks back at him. His hair is sweaty and his clothes are crumpled. 

“I took a cab,” Yuuri says. “I didn’t-- I didn’t realize. I didn’t realize it hurt you too.”

Viktor looks back at him. He feels Yuuri’s heartbeat like a caged animal in his chest; relentless and strong, overfast and crowded and terrified.

Viktor must frown or look confused, because the next thing Yuuri says is, “It’s like drowning.”

Viktor nods. 

Yuuri reaches out for Viktor’s hand and puts it on the right side of his chest. Viktor feels the echoing of his own heartbeat there. Slower. 

“Take it back,” Yuuri says. 

Viktor looks at Yuuri and he feels something in him swell and break. He tries to find his words. 

“It’s  _ hurting you _ ,” Yuuri says, his voice loud and firm. “Take it back!”

Viktor tries to find the words for it. It takes a moment, before he finally says, “Do I mean that little?”

Yuuri’s face shifts and falls. “Viktor,” he says. “I’m hurting you. It’s hurting you. I can’t-- don’t let me hurt you. Please. Don’t let me-- take it back. It’s not worth it--  _ I’m _ not worth it.” He takes a few breath, gulps for air. “It feels like drowning,” he repeats. “Yurio told me you felt it too.”

Viktor shakes his head. “It’s okay,” he says. “It’s okay-- Yuuri--”   
“It’s not okay,” Yuuri answers. His voice is louder, sharper, but it threatens breaking. “I’m hurting you. I can’t hurt you. I can’t hurt you.”

“Yuuri,” Viktor says. “It’s hurting  _ you _ .”

“It’s okay,” Yuuri says. “It’s okay-- it always hurts me, that’s what it does.”

Yuuri is still wearing pajamas. 

Viktor tugs Yuuri forward, into the house. Yuuri follows him. 

They walk to the living room and sit down on the couch, at opposite ends, facing each other. Viktor sits crosslegged and studies Yuuri. 

“I love you,” Viktor says. Not a greeting or a goodnight or a goodbye, but a statement. Plain and clear. A truth. “I meant that, when I said it. I still do. I love you every way you are.”

Yuuri’s eyes close for a moment, like he is searching for something. 

“Sometimes I fall apart,” Yuuri says. “It’s better than it used to be but I-- I fall apart.”

Yuuri takes a deep breath.

“I wouldn’t want anyone to feel that way,” Yuuri says. “When I fall apart. I don’t want anyone to feel how I feel when I fall apart. Especially you.”

Viktor sits with that, before he says, “You shouldn’t have to do it alone,” he says. 

He reaches out a little bit, takes Yuuri’s hand. 

Yuuri lets him. 

His brown eyes are tired and red-rimmed. Viktor can feel on his face the feeling of tears drying. 

“You shouldn’t have to feel it,” Yuuri says. “You shouldn’t be stuck with me.”

“I’m not stuck with you,” Viktor says. “I love you.”

“I can’t hurt you,” Yuuri says. “I won’t do that to you. Take it  _ back _ .”

Of course, they are interrupted by pounding at Viktor’s door. 

They both turn to look at it. 

Makkachin barks. Walks from the back of the house to the door. 

Viktor sighs, heavily. 

“What is that expression, in English?” He asks. “When it rains it won’t stop raining?”

“When it rains, it pours,” Yuuri answers. 

Viktor nods. He gets back up from the couch and opens the door, and Yurio and Phichit are there. 

“Is Yuuri here?” Phichit asks, panic lacing his voice. 

Viktor nods. 

Phichit pushes his way inside and Yurio follows, glaring. 

“Yuuri, what the  _ fuck _ ,” Phichit declares. “You just  _ disappeared _ what the  _ fuck _ .”

“Why...is everyone…in my house,” Viktor murmurs, closing the door. Makkachin wags her tail as she accosts Yurio, who sputters and swears in Varan. 

“Phichit,” Yuuri sighs. 

“No,” Phichit says. “We made rules. We laid them out. You’re not allowed to just disappear. You’re not allowed to go incommunicado and then get mad at me when I show up to make sure you’re okay and you’re not allowed to be mad at me when you disappear from your apartment without telling me!”

“Phichit, I’m an adult!” Yuuri shouts. 

“You’re not an island!” Phichit answers back, at the same volume. 

“ _ Stop yelling in my house!”  _ Viktor shouts, louder than all of them. 

All of them look at him. 

Yurio is still glaring at him. Phichit is glaring at Yuuri. And Yuuri looks like he wishes the Earth would open up and swallow him whole. 

Viktor runs his hands through his loose hair. He takes a deep breath. 

“Yurio,” he says, “why are you here?” 

Yurio rolls his eyes. “You haven’t been in the office or answering your phone or the door. You aren’t like that. And you gave yourself to  _ him _ so it must be  _ his _ fault so I went to talk to him and--”

“Don’t presume to know what I’m like,” Viktor interrupts. “And do not interfere with our relationship anymore. I love Yuuri. I know what we did. I know what it means. I don’t regret it and I don’t take it back. I  _ can’t _ take it back, even if I wanted to.”

Viktor looks over at Phichit. “I am sure you and Yuuri have things to discuss,” he says. “We were in the middle of something, though. Both of you, please leave.”

Yuuri stands up, as if to go, before Phichit lays a hand on his shoulder and pushes him back down on the couch. Phichit grabs Yurio’s shoulder and pulls him away.

“Sorry. Sorry. I'm sorry,” Yuuri says, watching both of them. 

“We’re not finished!” Phichit answers, and slips out the door, pulling a grumbling Yurio with him. 

The door closes. 

Yuuri has his head buried in his hands. 

Viktor rolls his neck backward, and sighs, heavily. 

“I’m sorry,” Yuuri says. 

His voice is so small. 

Viktor looks at him. Yuuri’s fingers are wound into his hair. He’s hunched over his knees. 

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” he repeats. “I’m sorry.”

Viktor sits down on the floor, in front of Yuuri. 

“I love you,” Viktor says. 

Yuuri takes a deep breath. He releases it, shakily. 

Viktor reaches forward. He hesitates, for the barest moment, before he reaches out and rests his hand on Yuuri’s foot, runs his thumb along his bony ankle. 

“I love you,” Viktor repeats. “I love you when you are hurting. I love you when you are no fun. I love you, Yuuri. Please don’t push me away.”

Yuuri stays hunched in on himself for a long moment, before he slowly begins to unfold, to look at Viktor. 

Yuuri looks about as awful as Viktor feels. Viktor supposes that’s appropriate.

Viktor loves him so much he can hardly bear it. 

“I love you,” Viktor says.

“I hurt you,” Yuuri says. His voice creaks around it. Threatens tears. 

“You don’t have to be alone,” Viktor says. “You don’t have to hurt alone. You don’t have to. You don’t have to hurt alone.”

“It’s like  _ drowning _ ,” Yuuri says. His voice is nearly a whisper. 

Viktor nods. “I know,” he says. 

“I’m so-- I’m so tired,” Yuuri says.

Viktor nods. 

“I’m sorry,” Yuuri says. 

“I love you,” Viktor says. 

“I’m sorry,” Yuuri says, again. 

They sit there, in the silent house, for a few moments. The sun slowly begins to rise, throwing daylight into Viktor’s house. 

Yuuri’s eyes search Viktor, tiredly.

"I'm not worth it," Yuuri says. 

"Yuuri," Viktor says, tracing the shape of Yuuri's ankle bone, curved and angular. "Yuuri, you are. You are."

Yuuri's brown eyes are so sad and soft and weary. 

“Come to bed,” Viktor says. “It’s still so early.”

Yuuri sighs, again. 

Viktor stands. Pulls Yuuri up from the couch and together they walk to the bedroom. 

  
  



	31. Chapter 31

Yuuri fits into the space in Viktor’s arms perfectly. His arms wrap over his shoulders and with his chin tilted downward, his nose nests gently into the part of Yuuri’s hair. Yuuri can feel the soft, steady rise and fall of his chest and the slow, ceaseless beat of his heart. His long-fingered hand shelters carefully into Yuuri’s own hand. 

Yuuri can’t sleep, but the feeling is so absolutely safe, so restful, so he drifts as slowly the sun begins to rise. 

Viktor holds him close and he says, his voice quiet and steady, “My Yuuri, did you think I had not drowned before?”   
Yuuri draws in closer to himself, pulls his knees to his chest. The action pulls Viktor’s arms tighter around, despite the gap that grows from where Yuuri draws his knees to his chest, away from Viktor’s long legs. 

“I did not eat for three days, when they died,” Viktor says, softly. “And I did not sleep for nearly a week. When I feel it….when I felt it...I did not feel drowning, the way you do. But I have felt something similar.”

Viktor’s breath is soft and steady. Waves crashing. 

Yuuri sighs. 

“I had to take care of Makka, though,” Viktor says. 

“She’s a good girl,” Yuuri says. 

“She is,” Viktor answers. 

Viktor’s bed a boat on an ocean. Yuuri’s lungs full of water. 

And something about it settles into Yuuri. 

And finally, Yuuri  _ surfaces _ . 

Something in Yuuri crumbles, shakes apart. And where once Yuuri was drowning, now he is crying. Sobbing. His throat aches, scraped with the feeling. He cries, he cries, he cries. And Viktor holds him. 

Yuuri sobs. He pulls Viktor’s arms closer to himself. The sun rises. 

“I love you, Yuuri,” Viktor says, again. He says it like he could say it every day for the rest of his life. 

For the rest of  _ their _ lives. 

“I love you,” Yuuri answers, his voice hoarse. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I hurt you and Phichit and Yurio.”

“I know,” Viktor says. “And they know, too.”

Yuuri sighs. It feels like putting down a weight. 

He blinks, slowly. He falls asleep. 

The sun rises. 

Viktor holds him close. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> there's more of this; think of this as the first part of a larger project (hence why it's now part one of a series!). i really wanted to build the first part toward the opening of their relationship and to the start of yuuri maybe addressing his mental illness.   
> there's more, but this is the close of the first arc.

**Author's Note:**

> again all thanks to MildSweet (https://archiveofourown.org/users/MildSweet/pseuds/MildSweet)
> 
> like this work? want to know more about the art being mentioned in it and some of why i picked it? or maybe abou the world/worlds i've put here or character backgrounds?  
> https://sunlighthurtsmyeyesfic.tumblr.com/  
> check this shit out.


End file.
